The Fading World

by Neon Czolgosz

Rating: teen
Tags: Gilda, Adventure, Prince Blueblood, Crossover, Sunset Shimmer, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Main 6, Trixie
Length: 37071

Equestria is dying, ever since Princess Celestia sacrificed herself to bind her fallen sister. An old power has resurfaced, and five ponies race to claim it. One master of magic will take the Grail. They will save the fading world, or rule its ashes.

A Fate/Zero crossover of sorts.

Equestria is dying, and always has been.

The whole world has been this way for a thousand years, ever since Princess Celestia sacrificed herself to bind the fallen Princess Luna. Year by year the soil turns barren, the oceans turn still, the sun glows colder, and civilization slowly crumbles. The pegasi have not controlled the weather for centuries. Soon, the unicorns will lack the strength to raise the sun each morning. The world will be bare of life in less than two centuries. Even the most powerful magical artifacts cannot halt the decline.

Until now.

An old power has resurfaced, and five ponies race to claim it. A young duke, desperate to save his city and reclaim his family honor. A bounty hunter who speaks to the earth. A scion of magical power. A purposeless prodigy. And a college dropout. They will raise powerful servants and fight for the Grail of Magic.

Dark factions plot on the horizons and strange beings peer in from outside places. One master of magic will claim the Grail. They will save the fading world... or rule its ashes.

Published 2014-12-31 00:20:08 UTC
Last updated 2015-11-05 00:15:56 UTC

In Living Memory.

One week ago...

The morning delivery brought good news for Applejack, and good news had been a rare thing in Ponyville as of late.

She finished her morning chores on the farm, passed off all the council affairs she could to the town mayor, walked through the endless acres of sweet potato fields into the lone apple orchard to find her younger sister, and sent her sister off to deliver a series of messages. Applejack could return to the farmhouse, then, and wait.

She was half-way up the tracks to her home when two stallions called to her. Between them, they carried a rail-thin cream coated pony with a two-color mane that had seen better days, and a fresh bruise under her right eye.

“Boss, we caught this mare stealing,” said the brown-coated stallion. He was Caramel, a cousin of Applejack, and as trustworthy as anypony was these days.

“She slipped through a grate into the eastern granary,” said the other, a navy-coated pony by the name of Noteworthy. “Had a sack with three week’s worth of rations, easy.”

“Did she break the grate?” asked Applejack, sharply. Stealing food was a serious offence alone, enough to earn weeks in the stocks or even exile. Destroying farm property was a capital crime.

“Nah, boss. She just took the screws off. We caught her when she was trying to put them back on.”

Applejack nodded, mildly relieved. She did not have time to preside over an execution today. She turned to the mare in the middle. “Were you stealing food, missy?”

The mare looked downward and trembled. “P-please...”

Applejack put a hoof under the mare’s chin and lifted it sharply. “You look at me when I’m talking to you, understand? I’ll ask again. Were you stealing food?”

Tears flowed from her eyes as she nodded softly. “I’m s-sorry, I’m s-so sorry...”

“Tell me why you did it. Don’t lie to me, it’ll be so much worse if you lie.”

“I h-have a wife, and she’s p-pregnant,” said the mare, haltingly. “Twice this week we’ve been to the ration line and there’s—there’s just not enough left for one pony between us. I’ve b-been giving up all my food to her but it’s just not enough and she’s barely got the energy to stand upright and I’m dizzy from hunger all the time and I just wanted enough food to make sure I wouldn’t lose them both and oh Celestia I’m going to die please don’t kill me please don’t leave her without me...”

The mare broke down into incoherent sobbing, sagging her weight against her two captors. Applejack stood, unmoving.

“Caramel?” she said.

He snapped to attention. “She’s, uh, she’s got a wife. A unicorn, plays the harp at Berry’s. I think she’s pregnant, yeah.”

Applejack nodded. “Alright, Caramel, track that mare down and get her to Redheart for a check up. Make sure she gets fed. We ain’t had a pony die from hunger since Pappy’s day, and I ain’t keen to have one on my watch. Then track down Mayor Mare and tell her that ponies ain’t getting fed in the ration queue. Our books—not t’mention a glance at the dang granaries—say we should have enough to scrape by. If there’s something hinky going on with our food supply, she needs to sniff it out. That’s her top priority.”

“Yes boss,” he said, and stood expectantly.

“That’s all, sugarcube, off you go.” As he ran off, she turned towards Noteworthy. “You. Put the heat to this mare, medium-style. I want her standing up and working tomorrow, but very clear that she comes to the authorities if something’s up, instead of slithering around like a dang grass-snake.”

Applejack waited just long enough for Noteworthy to pull a heavily-knotted length of thick hemp rope from his saddlebag, knock the mare to the ground, and start raining down blow after blow on her limbs and body. Applejack then turned to walk down the path, ignoring the pathetic whimpers from the pony she left behind.

She soon approached what was jokingly called the Apple Clan Farmhouse. A century ago it had been a farmhouse. Now it was almost a castle: a large, fortified, three-story building built on an artificial hill, with clear gardens sloping down the sides of the hill, a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the surrounding fields and granaries, with a twelve-foot palisade surrounding it. There were four watchtowers with guards posted day and night, and a crow’s nest atop the Farmhouse proper.

It was the caged heart of Ponyville. The town mayor practically lived there. Petitioners and scribes visited ten hours a day, searched twice on entry and on exit. The family archive had long outstripped Ponyville library, carrying every guide and reference material the town could need, and carrying the only magical tomes and ideological tomes in Ponyville. All matters of civics, law, and organisation in Ponyville ran through the Apple Clan.

She walked through the brick-arch doorway and hung up her duster coat, still carrying the package in her saddlebag. Guards nodded respectfully as she moved through the house. She greeted Mayor Mare, Filthy Rich, a few petitioners that she knew from town as she passed by, and went straight to the study.

A smile crept across Applejack’s face as she saw her grandmother dozing away at the desk. She set the package down in front of her.

Applejack opened a cabinet. Inside were two-dozen neatly-stacked scrolls and several shelves of bottled mixtures, powders, and herbs. She unfurled a particular scroll and hung it on the back of the study door, then blew a pinch of powdered blood onto the parchment. The parchment glowed and the room seemed to list slightly, though only for a moment.

She checked a rune carved into the cabinet door. It glowed a faint orange. The spell had worked. Only the three ponies she had invited would be able to enter the room until it was dispelled.

There was a knock, and she opened the door. Exactly three ponies entered, a giant, red stallion, a pegasus with a rainbow mane and a soldier’s bearing, and a butter-yellow pegasus who seemed to shrink between the two.

“Mac, Dash, ‘Shy. Good to see y’all. Take a seat.” All sat except Applejack and the rainbow-maned pegasus. “Somethin’ up, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow Dash nodded quickly, and began to pace the room. “Uh, yeah. Kinda. I dunno how your magical tests and experiments worked or anything, but I put out those feelers and stuff you asked for? Yeah. Something big is up. The Council of Unicorn Mages in Canterlot is going ballistic, the Manehattan Collective have gone underground, and the Griffic Seer Society is dark, they’ve like, they’ve shut down Condorcorum, mare, like the whole city. I can’t even reach the farther-out groups. If you think this ‘Grail War’ thing is going on right now, well, you’re not alone.”

Applejack nodded. “Everything adds up. It happens once a century, and this is that once.”

“Right, right. Before we go any further, though...” said Rainbow Dash, eyes shining with uncharacteristic worry. “Are you sure this is worth it? Don’t get me wrong, none of those other tools deserve to win, but you guys have spent your whole lives keeping Ponyville independent. You’ve kept out of politics, kept out of magic east of Everfree, and kept Sweet Apple Acres safe. This Grail War isn’t going to be a tangle, it’s going to be the tangle. Everything you own, everypony you know, it’s all fair game.” She sucked in a deep breath, and looked directly at Applejack. “And whoever wins, you’re gonna have at least three factions mad as hell at you.”

Applejack was about to reply, and then a wet, gurgling cackle came from the far end of the room.

Granny Smith was up in her chair, puffs of purple steam rolling out from between her lips, golden eyes glowing with unearthly light. Bone and gristle popped and crunched as she stretched her neck, and looked directly at Rainbow Dash.

“You don’t think sendin’ my granddaughter to war is worth it.” It was a statement, not a question.

Rainbow Dash squirmed in her seat, uncomfortable with the Apple matriarch at the best of times. “I was only—”

“Shush!” snapped Granny Smith, putting up a hoof. “Now, you lissen here, lil’ birdie,” she rasped, “an’ lemme tell you all about what Sweet Apple Acres was like when I was a foal.”

Granny Smith stepped around the table. As she moved her sickly-green coat seemed to fade, revealing strange flesh underneath, rough and woody as if she had bark for skin. A thousand tiny runes were seared onto her body, and they lit up with the same golden fire from behind her eyes. The runes faded in and out, quieting and quickening in turn, welling up into one pure fire—

The room was no more. The five ponies found themselves in the middle of a sepia-toned field. The Sweet Apple Acres Farmhouse was visible in the distance, still on its hill but with no palisade, no watchtowers, and no warding pylons blinking along the rooftops.

Rainbow Dash blinked as the realisation struck. They were in a wheat field. She’d had wheat bread before, in diplomatic meetings and parties of the rich and powerful. Strange stuff, with a thick, crunchy outside and a soft, warm, yielding inside. Nopony grew it in Equestria any more, it was too much work for not enough food. It needed twice the amount of land, care, and weather as a crop of potatoes, and then needed husking and milling just to be edible. Everything was potatoes or sweet potatoes, with just enough garden-grown fruit that ponies didn’t start getting scurvy. And yet all around her was a sea of wheat, enough to feed a town entirely on bread and then some.

The scene moved, and the land of the farm shifted beneath them. Atop a hill, they could see the farmhouse, and the wheat fields, and the spot they had previously stood on. From here, they could see the fields for what they were: a tiny lake of gold surrounded by orchards. Orchards! Not a single, sad relic of days long lost, tended out of die-hard tradition and a need for their family magic, but a score of them, thousands of trees all swelling with crisp, juicy fruit.

Another shift, this time into Ponyville proper. It was midday, and yet only a dozen ponies were waiting in the ration queue at the town square, not the grim half-mile line that usually stretched through town. Town guards strolled through the streets, instead of patrolling the outskirts in heavily-armed eight-pony squads. There were no boarded-over windows, no desperate families of refugees sleeping outside the town hall.

The sun set, and the sun rose, and time cycled on. The wheat fields thinned out, and sometimes the harvests failed altogether. Apples on trees turned from proud things as thick as a hoof to sour little stones that could stave off scurvy and not much else. Fields were torn up and planted with sweet potatoes, at first because they were hardy, and then because food was getting more expensive everywhere and they had to keep up. The town changed, slowly. Every year was a tiny bit tighter than the last one. Prudence became necessity. Ponies from other, unluckier areas flowed into the place where no working pony went hungry. Bandit raids turned from simple robberies into deadly military strikes.

Every year was the same: a simple progression from the previous one. And every decade was less recognisable than the last.

The illusion faded, first patterning out onto the walls and surfaces of the study, and then disappearing completely. Granny Smith’s runes faded. Her pale-green coat was solid once more. She shuffled back around the desk, slumped into her chair, and looked at Rainbow Dash with tired eyes.

“That, my child,” she said, “is why we ain’t just gon’ hunker down at Sweet Apple Acres. ‘Cause soon enough, there ain’t gon’ be a Sweet Apple Acres.”

Education

It was ten in the morning, and Sunset Shimmer’s patience was already wearing thin.

A particularly insufferable student—now ex-student—had seen her as she walked across campus, and had been pestering Sunset to reinstate her. She had already told her that reinstatement was quite impossible, that another student had already been assigned her lodgings, that no funds remained to hire on new students let alone allow her back, and that she did not warrant the exceptional circumstances to reverse her expulsion.

“—but you can’t just kick me out!” cried the blue mare, her eyes wet with crocodile tears. “I’ve done nothing to deserve expulsion! I haven’t broken the honor code, I’ve attended all of my lectures, and I’ve passed all of my exams. It’s utterly groundless!”

Sunset Shimmer sighed. She could already feel a tight, constricting pain throbbing between her eyeballs, and she hadn’t even had breakfast yet. “And as I’ve explained to you several times before, attendance, behaviour and grades are the minimum requirements to continue study at the Canterlot Academy. We only keep the best, and you have not made the cut. Most do not.”

“B-but I have! I’ve worked so hard and I’ve learned so much here!”

“Yes, you have taken more from the Academy than you are ever capable of giving back, this is true. It is good that you have not wasted both your and our time during your studies here, but that alone is not enough to continue your stay here. And speaking of wasting time...”

“My family won’t take me back, I’ll have nowhere to go!” The mare’s voice felt like broken glass in Sunset’s ears. They had reached her office, and the mare slipped through the door before Sunset could shut it in her face.

“That is not my concern,” said Sunset, turning to face her. “I will tell you one last time: your absurd focus on jumped-up parlor tricks and magical sleight-of-hoof is an unacceptable vice in a student of your caliber, and your brash attitude is a distraction to other staff and students. Your tutors told you this, but you refused to change. Your expulsion is a natural consequence of your ignorance. Now, leave my office before I do something rash.”

Sunset Shimmer turned away, but felt something grip her leg. Her head snapped round to look. The blue unicorn was belly down on the floor, holding on to her hind hoof.

“P-please...” sobbed the mare. “It’s winter, I won’t survive, I’m begging you...”

That was it.

It brought her no pleasure to do what she was about to do, but such ignorant petitioners required a swift rebuke. Sunset lifted the mare in a magical field and pinned her against the stone wall of her office. With a thought, an enchantment seeped into the stones, and they held the mare with their own telekinetic energies. The mare screamed, and Sunset conjured a large bit and bridle over her head.

"You seem to have forgotten some basic magical knowledge, so allow me to give a final lecture," said Sunset, her voice dangerously low. "For centuries, less than one in ten unicorns have been born with enough power to cast anything more than feeble telekinesis, and half of all unicorns born have no magic whatsoever. Even when a 'powerful' unicorn is born, only a mixture of good breeding, careful training, and the ritual ensoulment of family magic can true magic be used. Each time the ensoulment ritual is used, its power drops, so a firstborn foal will inherit twice the power of the second-born, and four times the power of the third-born. I trust that you're keeping up, despite your rudimentary intellect."

Sunset walked over to her desk, leaving the terrified mare to squirm against invisible bonds. She rummaged around her desk drawers, and pulled out a pin crest. She held it aloft for the mare to see. "This is the Sunblaze crest, my family's crest. I come from a nine-generation line of mages--all firstborns, of course--and from many second and third children before that. It has been more than two centuries since our family blood was soiled with a non-mage." She smiled mirthlessly, and then tucked the pin away. "You come from a two-generation, eh, 'line' of mages, born from a medley of second and third foals. Your great-grandmother was not even a unicorn. Your power barely registers to my senses. You have literally nothing of any magical worth to offer the Academy. Nothing. Your sole purpose in life is to preserve your family magic in the hope of one day making a true mage from your bloodline. We allow unicorns like you to study at the academy so you might make a better class of servant or broodmare for a true mage. Your delusions of competence make you unsuitable even for that, and so we will not waste and further time or funds on you."

Sunset closed her eyes and brought a small, cherry red ball of flame into being. She floated it over to the trapped mare's face until the mare squeaked and tried to shimmy away from the heat. "But, I am not an unfair mage," said Sunset. "I will allow you this chance: I will take this ball of elemental fire, a mere speck of my true magical potential, and force it down your throat. If your puffed-up collection of card tricks can repel my power before your blood boils inside you, I will reinstate you with a full scholarship."

She held the mare's head straight with her telekinesis and forced her jaw open with an idle thought. She yanked the mare's tongue down until it almost touched her chin, and then moved the ball of fire until it was inches from her open mouth. "Or, you can simply leave. Shake your head if you want to do that."

The mare desperately shook her head, tears streaming down her face. Her bindings disappeared and the fire dissipated, dumping her unceremoniously on the floor. She scrambled to her feet and bolted from the room, sobbing hysterically.

Sunset's shoulders slumped, the rage draining away, and her nose wrinkled as she saw the small puddle by the wall. The mare had wet herself. Sunset shut her door, turned towards her desk, and jumped a foot in the air when she saw Twilight Sparkle sat up in her reading chair. Sunset had tutored the ex-Guard back when she could barely conjure a magelight. Seeing her combine effortless invisibility spells with her considerable knowledge of spycraft and infiltration took some getting used to.

Twilight glanced between Sunset and the door, and Sunset suddenly blushed at her outburst. She cleared her throat and said, "That was, ah, regretful but necessary." She didn't know why she looked embarrassed in front of Twilight Sparkle, she might as well feel guilty at a housecat. "She had been bothering me for several days now, and we simply can't afford unnecessary distractions this close to the start."

"I see," said Twilight. "You wanted to talk?"

Sunset moved behind her desk, sat, and swiveled the chair to face her. "Yes, I did. It's not urgent, if you have duties to take care of."

Twilight shook her head. "My schedule is clear for the next hour. I have already given Spike his breakfast, his morning studies, and an eight-second hug."

"...You still time your hugs."

"It fosters consistency."

Sunset stared for a moment, and then said, "Right. Well then, I'd like to talk about the Servant summoning."

"Oh?" said Twilight, listening intently. Sunset assumed she was listening intently, at least. It was difficult to tell Twilight's expressions apart at the best of times.

"Our research on the artifacts is complete. We will have the most powerful Archer and Caster types it is possible to acquire, even if a pre-apotheosis version of Archer is summoned. I sent out a team of archivists to remove any information relating to Nightmare Moon as a precaution, and the only extant artifacts of hers are safely in my posession. Our strategy remains the same. You will pair with Caster, and between his raw power and your guile you will be able to lure our enemies into inescapable traps. Archer and I will then provide the power for a killing blow."

Twilight stared at the wall as if considering this, and then nodded. "Understood. Is the transference matrix working?"

"Yes. It's still very taxing," said Sunset, "but now all nine archmages of the Council are in an extended trance, funneling their full magical potential toward me. They are sealed away in safety and concealed from attack. My spellcasting abilities nearly approach those of a Servant. Between my spells and Caster's, our two teams should be able to out-cast any other pair."

"Good," said Twilight. She looked at Sunset's desk. "Hmm. It's ten in the morning and you have a file in your in-tray. Your morning paperwork is usually done before nine. Something important?"

Sunset Shimmer laughed. “Yes, indeed. It’s a file I wanted you to see, actually. A report on the third Master, a mare called Applejack Apple.”

Twilight’s ears twitched. “The bounty hunter?”

“Oh, her exploits finally reached the walls of the Royal Guard at some point, then?” she asked, with a wry grin. “The last I heard, the Guard denied that any such bounty hunter existed.”

“The Guard would deny this morning’s sunrise if they thought it would be in the interest of public safety to do so,” replied Twilight, flatly. “The Watchtower was well aware of her existence. She has been implicated in several murders, and there was—and presumably still is—a quiet warrant for her arrest and interrogation.”

Sunset considered this and nodded. “Interesting. What do you know of her?”

“Not much. Extremely dangerous, do not approach, inform the Seer Council of any sighting. Her case information was need-to-know.”

Sunset tapped the folder. “Well, I believe I have that case information and then some. She’s a bounty hunter, yes, and you’re not wrong about her being extremely dangerous. She specialises in killing and capturing mages—not unlike your former vocations, now I mention it—but you and I would consider her tactics highly unorthodox... not to mention uncivilised. She plans every assault to minimize the role that magic can play, and then uses her considerable physical skills to win the confrontation. She can crush a mare’s head with a single hoof. Her operational methods are entirely alien to any good mage, and she uses this to her advantage.”

Twilight opened up the folder and began to leaf through it. At the front was a photograph, a portrait of a mare. A handsome face, green eyes, freckles marred by a thick scar over the left cheek. “May I borrow this file?”

“Of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some final academic housekeeping to attend to before we begin the summoning.”

Twilight barely noticed the door shut behind her. She was already engrossed in the file.

Heirloom

Bluestone Manor had three dining rooms: the Grand Hall, with space for six long tables, a buffet, and seating for three-hundred ponies, the cozier Canterhorn Room, with a mere fifty-pony seating capacity, and the downright cramped ‘War Room.’ with a tiny twelve-pony roundtable. The Grand Hall saw use once a year at Hearth’s Warming and a few times every decade for a wedding, the ‘War Room’ saw the occasional belligerent family dinner when Polaris’s relatives deigned to visit, and the Canterhorn Room had not seen use in years.

Instead of the actual dining rooms, Polaris and his coterie ate most of their meals in one of the manor’s many game rooms, one chosen for its equidistance between his chambers and the kitchens. Meals were eaten on a card table, a disused billiards table was covered in mounds of documents, the shelves of games and manuals had been cleared and filled with arcane tomes and notebooks, and particularly important documents were pinned to the walls with playing darts.

Presently, Rarity sat at the card table, drinking tea and looking over hornwritten notes. Lists of names and locations and pertinent details of the Canterlot criminal element. The Grail War had the explicit cooperation of the Royal Guard, but there were a great many places in this city outside of their reach. It fell to Rarity to pass along needed warnings to certain ponies, both to ensure the safety of the masses and to avoid the involvement of those best left uninvolved.

Polaris Blueblood burst into the room with such force that the door slammed against the wall, and several darts fell to the floor.

“Clear the table,” he said, breathlessly. “We have it!”

Rarity filed away her papers and the duke placed a package in their place. It came unwrapped in a frenzy of paper, cardboard and packing straw.

Blueblood held in his magic a small, X-shaped piece of metal, barely the size of a drink coaster. The metal was a lighter shade than silver, the four spokes were perfectly cylindrical and flat at the end, and a diamond the size of a peanut lay in the very middle.

“A late Hearth Warming’s present from Miss Yearling...” said Blueblood, reverently.

“She really found it,” whispered Rarity. “The Platinum Razor...”

Blueblood levitated the cross a safe distance away from them, and focused. A thin, barely-visible blue blur extended from one of the spokes. He manipulated his magic, and the blur lengthened and shrunk. He experimented, and the blur disappeared entirely before reappearing out of one of the other spokes, and then from several spokes at once.

He scanned the room and selected a crystal goblet from the drinks cabinet. He placed the goblet on one corner of the billiards table, extended a beam from the cross, and let it swim across the goblet in two deft strokes. He trotted to the billiards table, and gave one end a solid thump with his hoof.

The goblet collapsed into three perfectly-cut sections.

Blueblood turned to Rarity, and grinned. “They don’t make them like this any more.”

Rarity laughed. “May I?”

He nodded and passed her the cross. She took out a jewelers loupe and began to examine it in great detail. “The Platinum Razor... it’s marvellous. Why, it must be thousands of years old and it’s in perfect condition. Not simply untarnished, but not even nicked or dented! I don’t even recognise the enchantments... cuneiform engraving, not visible in normal light, three consecutive bands of script in a triple helix, one visible in ultraviolet, another in spectrarine, and the third only visible in a combination of both. I can’t even begin to imagine how such a thing would work!”

It was more than a powerful magical artifact. It was a catalyst, an object with a strong connection to a hero of legend. It would allow the hero to be summoned, and the stronger the connection between hero and catalyst, the easier the summoning would be.

“The personal hornblade of Prince Platinum III, third ruler of Equestria and fencer extraordinaire,” said Blueblood. “The quality of the magic is to be expected. He was known as the Patron Prince for the lavish sums he spent on scholarship, arts and sciences. He surrounded himself with the most powerful mages of his day and followed their studies with some interest. Considering the sheer amount of knowledge lost over the centuries, this blade is possibly the finest of its kind in existence. And, given that Prince Platinum was a very distant ancestor of mine, something of a family heirloom to boot...”

A sly look crossed Rarity’s face. “Something of a family resemblance too, if the busts are to be believed.”

“There is that, yes.”

“Do you think he’ll go along with your plan?”

Blueblood nodded carefully. “He understands honor, and he was quite the devious bastard when it benefitted his line and his country. Even if it means a slight loss of personal glory for him, he will know my plight. With the training and artifacts of my line at my disposal, I shall show the other Masters the true legacy of House Blueblood. Even if I do not win the Grail, I will show them true honor, and that there is power in Canterlot and its citizens undreamed of in their philosophies.”

Rarity laughed, and a smile crossed her face in spite of herself. “Oh, Blueblood. Only you could conceive a harebrained scheme like this, and only you could convince me to go along with it.”

Blueblood shrugged. “I still have some charms.”

“I don’t know who’s madder,” said Rarity, shaking her head, “you for fighting this war, or Fancy Pants for supervising the whole thing.”

“I’m the mad one,” said Blueblood. “Fancy Pant’s role here is perfectly sane, even if he’s neurotic about mustache wax and cocktail garnishes.”

“He’s not ‘neurotic,’ he’s dreadfully allergic to olives, that’s hardly the same.”

“I’ll take your word for it and avoid serving any martinis in his presence. In any case, he’s not mad, he’s simply in a bind.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He’s mad to serve as the adjudicator for the sheer danger it puts him in,” said Blueblood, “but he’d be mad not to adjudicate because of the sheer danger of letting the Grail War run amok. He may not be able to control the war, but he can at least direct it.”

“Hmm. Well, be glad I remember to send him Hearth Warmings and birthday gifts from you,” said Rarity, “since he is arranging sanctuary for defeated Masters.”

“How is he going about that, exactly?” asked Blueblood, raising a brow. “I never saw him as the sort to have a secret base full of mercenaries.”

Rarity put on her reading glasses, and pulled out a set of her notes from under the table. “If my sources are correct, he’s working through trusted members of the Royal Guard. I don’t have the exact numbers, but they should have two to three companies of guardponies and their warlock auxiliaries at their disposal. Not a force that could end the Grail War, at least not with the involvement of the Canterlot Academy, but powerful enough that antagonising them would be unwise,” she said. She flicked through the pages until she saw something else of note. “The diplomatic lodgings at the Watchtower have been booked out for the next several months. I assume that’s where Fancy Pants will have any defeated Masters tucked away.”

“Excellent. If I’m lucky, that’s where I’ll end up.”

Rarity laughed again and smiled, but the smile never quite reached her eyes. “No, Blueblood, you will not. You’ll get to the stage where you have proven your honor and won more than you dared to hope for, where you should fall back and let your Servant take the blow, and then? Oh, you’ll do something brave and daring and reckless and wonderful,” she said, “and it will be curtains."

Blueblood laughed, and swallowed. “Yes, I suppose I will.”

Rarity looked away, and when she looked back she said in a very quiet voice, “I swore to see this through. I have known from the beginning what the reality was, and what the likely outcome will be.” She swallowed, as if choking something back. “Please do not think that makes it any easier for me.”

And with that, she walked out of the room.

Trespass

Trixie ran down the hallways, crying. She had spent the better part of an hour locked in a bathroom, shivering and sobbing and dreaming of biting comebacks and impossible revenge, pausing to wash the snot and tears from her face, and now she simply wished to be out of this place, anywhere but here with these jackals dressed in pony skins. The thinnest twitch of a smile touched her lips as she saw the main door. She could leave in peace and at least rent an inn for a night while she tried to figure out a future with regular hot meals in it. She pressed her hoof to the massive oaken double door and pushed.

It was locked.

Trixie fell back onto her haunches and tried very, very hard to not start bawling her lungs out.

She was trapped inside the Pure Magics Lecture Building, her own personal pit of suffering, where all her very worst experiences in all her three years at the Canterlot Academy had taken place, and where her livelihood had been brought to a final, unceremonious end a few hours previously. The one silver lining to this horrible day was that she’d never have to roam these halls again, the halls where students with greater pedigrees than her had spat at and mocked her, and where smarter students had ignored and dismissed her, and the thought that she’d have to spend even a minute more in this place suddenly seemed like a greater injustice than all of her previous trials here together.

She shoved the door, hoping that it was stiff and some force would move it. Nothing. She ran her hooves over the iron struts, hoping to find some latch or switch. Nothing. She growled in frustration and lit up her horn, tempted to simply blast the door from her hinges, and a cold chill ran down her spine. If somepony caught her tampering with Academy property...

Her horn faded. She sniffled, and wiped the snot on her fetlock.

She considered her choices. Professor Shimmer would still be here—no. That thought died before it had even formed. Trixie’s ego could only take so much, and asking Sunset Shimmer for a favor, even the tiniest one was a step too far. She would beg for moldy hay before she asked that evil witch for help. Besides, she wasn’t entirely sure that the professor wouldn’t incinerate her where she stood, just to send a message to any other would-be problem students. The custodian was probably nearby, but that sour old donkey creeped Trixie out. She didn’t know what was worse—the scowls he gave when she glanced his way, or the looks he gave her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

No, she decided, it would be better to find another way out. The lights were still on, there was surely some tradepony entrance or side door out of there still unlocked. If all else failed she could find a window, one that had cheap locks that she could surely wrangle open without damaging.

Half an hour later, Trixie was still in the Pure Magics Lecture Building, close to panic. The mansion-sized building seemed to loop in on itself. The doors, corridors and stairways all looked the same, distinguished only by different paintings of long-dead ponies hung up along the hallways. It felt like the building itself was conspiring against her, deliberately confusing her and drawing her away from the exits. She swore that doors locked behind her when she tried to double back out of dead-ends, forcing her to take ever-more circuitous routes out of the building.

Her chest tightened and her heart beat in her ears and her pace quickened from a shuffle to a lively trot to a blind run, trying every door she came across, desperate to find the way out. Every door she touched was locked, forcing her into ever-tighter circles. She climbed stairways she didn’t know existed, higher and higher, hoping she could find just one window that wasn’t criss-crossed with damnable bars of wrought iron.

She ran into a corridor on the third floor, no windows and three doors on either side. The door at the end of the corridor was locked, and all the doors along the sides were to private rooms. She doubled back and found the door she’d entered through locked as well. A trickle of cold sweat ran down her forehead as a horrible thought hit her.

All of these doors are on automatic sensors.

A quick scan proved her right, lighting up a tiny set of cuneiform in the upper-left corner of the door. Time and wear had scratched at it and weakened the magic, so instead of locking shut at a given hour, it would lock some time after that hour. Trixie groaned. Anypony important enough to get the charms fixed would have their own set of charm tags, allowing them to open any locked door in the building. Trixie was not that important, and now she was completely stuck.

She shivered, and not just from fear. The midwinter cold pierced even the thick academy walls, and there were no heat charms in any of the hallways. Perhaps if she tried a room, she thought, at least there might be a desk to hunker under until morning.

She tried one door. Locked. A second. Locked. A third door creaked open and a rush of warm air hit her and—

I’m in the academy lodgings. This is Sunset Shimmer’s room!

Every professor at the academy had a private bedroom within the academy proper, a luxurious place to stay without having to trudge through the mundane scum of Canterlot every night, both as a privilege and a token of their station. This one belong to Sunset Shimmer, there was no doubt about it. Above the double bed and behind the desk hung the Sunblaze family emblem, and the gold-and-orange motif of every decoration in the room was hardly subtle. The room was empty, but it didn’t matter. To be caught here was death. Trixie began to back away when a horrible ‘click’ sounded out from behind her, the sound of a door unlocking.

Her eyes shrunk to pinpricks. She stumbled forward into Sunset’s room, dived under the bed and cast an invisibility spell for good measure.

The hoofsteps came closer and closer until they were almost at the door and Trixie squeezed her eyes shut realising it was over that Sunset Shimmer would see through her weak cantrip of a cloaking spell without a second glance and that would be the end and oh Celestia she hoped that it would be quick and Sunset wouldn’t slowly flay her with—

“Bloody cleaner, locking every bloody door in the bloody place. I swear to Ishtar, if I catch him fiddling with the lock charms I’m going to whip that silly ass to the bone...”

That was decidedly not the voice of Sunset Shimmer. Sunset Shimmer, after all, did not have a strong Trottingham accent. And Sunset Shimmer was not a donkey.

Trixie cracked open an eye. A donkey maid had entered the room, carting in a trolley laden with food.

“Hmph,” said the maid to herself. “She sends two complaints to the kitchens every week, and she’s not even here to eat her food. Typical bloody nailheads...” With that, she stomped away. Trixie was alone once more.

Trixie became acutely aware that she hadn’t eaten for three days, ever since her meal tokens were revoked.

She didn’t dare drop the invisibility spell, but she shuffled out from under the bed and approached the trolley.

Her mouth watered as she saw the spread. Thickly-sliced tomatoes and mozzarella on toasted bread, seasoned with salt and cracked pepper. A double hayburger, dripping with cheese and ketchup. The brightest, crispiest, lushest salad she’d even seen. Banana fritters dipped in chocolate. Trixie had only seen most of these foods in books.

She stared at the hayburger. She’d had something similar, with hayfries and an apple juice drink, four years ago when she had been accepted into the Canterlot Academy. Her entire family scrounged and scraped for a celebration, and got her the biggest, best meal they could afford. That had been half the size of this spread, and this was Sunset Shimmer’s evening snack.

She looked at the door. Sunset Shimmer could come back to her room at any moment. But all the food looked so good. Better than any food she’d ever tasted. Better than any food she’d seen.

Trixie’s stomach rumbled. Surely the professor wouldn’t miss a single slice of tomato, a single mouthful of mesclun?

She was gone the moment her teeth bit into the soft, salted tomato, through the creamy, thick cheese, and crunched through the toasted bread. After all, a tomato seed had dripped off her lips and on to the floor. Sunset Shimmer would notice that, right? There was no point trying to hide it any more, she might as well eat the whole thing. Every mouthful of peppery rocket and romaine, each lick of vinaigrette, every perfectly juicy tomato, each bite of the piping-hot slightly-spiced hayburger that sent rivulets of mustard and ketchup dripping down her chin, each tongue-scalding ball of dough and banana soaked in chocolate, this rich dark sauce that she’d only heard whispers of in the fanciest of hotels amongst the likes of white truffles and cinnamon and cow’s milk, each and every mouthful was hers now and she felt as if she’d gladly die at Sunset’s hoof rather than stop eating and end this sensory nirvana a second too soon.

Trixie fell to her haunches, groaning from pleasure. She couldn’t remember the last time her stomach had felt so full. It felt like half the meal was spread around her lips and down her chin, but she didn’t care. She was in a daze.

“Take me.” A hoarse command burst into Trixie’s ear.

Trixie squealed. She jumped up, tripped over her own cape and fell face-flat onto the ground. Her invisibility spell dissipated, and in her panic she couldn’t draw the power to recast it. She ran straight for the door, only to find it locked. She scrabbled and thumped at it, too shocked to think clearly, and slumped down against it.

“Help me.”

She could feel her heart beating in her throat. There was no one else in the room. She rose to her hooves, feeling as if her limbs were filled with rubber. After a final, desperate attempt on the door, she looked around the room for the source of the noise.

All the lights in the room seemed to dim, but Sunset Shimmer’s desk especially seemed to be shrouded in shadow.

“We know what you are,” spoke the voice again, calmer this time, though the sound still sent shivers through Trixie’s spine. “You alone can save me.

Two objects were on the desk, bathed in a strange glow. Trixie touched them haltingly, as if expecting a shock. One was a spiral-bound book titled ‘Notes on the Grail Wars and Related Summoning Sciences,’ with the name of the author scorched off. The other was a black wooden box, the size of a hardback dictionary.

Trixie pried the box open. Inside was... a fossil, perhaps? Something curved and strange and silvery, partly enveloped in stone. The rock was dusty and grimy, but the metallic parts were unmarred and gleaming.

She swallowed. Stealing a meal was one thing, and Sunset Shimmer would likely track her down and visit a brutal reprisal out of sheer spite. Stealing a magic tome and an ancient artifact was a declaration of war. There would be nowhere on earth for Trixie to hide from her wrath once she found out.

“Together we can defeat her,” whispered the voice. “Please, Trixie. Do not allow me to be bound as her slave.”

The voice quietened, and the lights flickered back to life. Trixie swallowed. The book and the box were the only signs that she had not simply dreamed the entire episode. At the end of the desk, on a hook, were a set of keys.

Trixie made up her mind.

Genesis

Rainbow Dash didn’t like the farmhouse. She didn’t like the smell of antiseptic, manure, and cheap incense, didn’t like the cramped rooms and cluttered courtyards, didn’t like the confinement and the stink of strange magic, couldn’t stand ‘Granny’ Smith Apple, and could do without the terrified looks she got from the local workers—being a Cloudsdale native carried a certain reputation these days.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Macintosh was a good training partner, Fluttershy was loveable as long as you didn’t hurt her little friends, Applejack was almost as awesome as she was, and she couldn’t get enough of these baked apples that Apple Bloom made. She ate one as she walked through the house, looking for Applejack.

She stopped chewing. She saw somepony who should not be there.

“Hey,” she called out, and “Hey!” she called out louder as a mare with a mint-green coat and a dark green mane slipped into the laundry room.

Rainbow Dash followed the mare inside. The mare pretended to have just noticed her presence.

“Who are you?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Oh! Hello ma’am, I’m the new maid—”

“No you’re not.”

The mare’s eyes widened, and she stammered, “It’s m-my first day here—”

“Do you think I’m stupid? The farmhouse has two maids, an arc— an archiev— a librarian guy, and a page. There’s like, twenty guards here, and they’re one special unit from the Ponyville barracks. I know their names, I could tell you what they ate for dinner last night, and I know there hasn’t been a new maid in five years.”

The mare laughed nervously. “L-look, I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am, they sent me here from the work line yesterday. I need to go, I told Miss Applejack I’d be back with her laundry and—”

The mare tried to walk around Rainbow Dash. The pegasus moved imperceptibly, and the mare fell as if she had slipped on ice. Rainbow Dash quickly mounted the mare and pressed a hoofblade to her neck.

“Are you a spy?” growled Rainbow Dash. “If you’re a spy, you better resist. You better fight back and struggle so I can paint the floor with your neck, you know why? ‘Cause if you don’t resist I’ll have to hoof you over to Applejack. She’ll do things to you that’ll give me nightmares.”

The mare froze, and then burst into tears. “Please don’t kill me!”

“What’s your name, huh?”

“S-sour Apple—gllrk!”

Rainbow Dash pushed the flat of the blade against the mare’s throat until she gagged from the pressure. “There hasn’t been a Sour Apple in the Apple family for a hundred years.”

“I swear, I was sent here from the work line in Ponyville, they’ll have all my records! The guards took my work pass when I came in or I could prove it right here, you have to believe me.”

Rainbow Dash’s expression flickered for a moment, and then hardened. “You only get work passes for jobs inside the town. Out here, they send you with an escort. You’re in big trouble, pal.”

A strange look came over the mare’s face. Her hind legs shifted, rubbing gently against Rainbow Dash’s flank. “We can work something out. I’ll find a way to pay, with my body...”

Rainbow Dash’s face twisted with anger, and then the pony beneath her twisted and shifted and changed until there was a very different looking pony in her place. An athletic pegasus mare with a yellow coat and an orange mane and eyes like bonfires.

“Was ‘Sour Apple’ too plain for your tastes?” asked the mare, in a voice Rainbow Dash had only heard in radio interviews. “Maybe somepony famous, somepony real hot would work better.”

“What the—”

The mare shifted again and now there was no mare at all but instead a griffoness, trailing her tail over Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark. “Heck, I’m going about this all the wrong way. Your tastes are obviously more exotic...”

Before Rainbow Dash could say a word, the griffoness melted away to leave an earth pony with toned flanks and powerful legs in her place. “...Or maybe you want something closer to home.”

“That’s enough of that,” came a familiar drawl. “Get up, you two.”

Rainbow Dash turned her head, and saw Applejack standing behind them with half a smile on her face. When she looked back, the mare was ‘Sour Apple’ again. What’s more, she was no longer underneath her. She was sat across the room on a pile of laundry, fiddling with Rainbow’s hoofblade.

Rainbow Dash looked between the two ponies, her eyes wide. “Wait, is that—”

“Yup, that’s Assassin,” said Applejack. “I summoned her last night. The ritual works better if you do it in secret.”

“Pleased to meet you, Rainbow Dash,” said Assassin, smirking. “Applejack, your friends and family are all so very delicious. It almost makes up for being summoned by such a royal stick-in-the-mud.”

“Shush, you. Follow me, the both of you. We’ve got work to do.”

Applejack led the way through the house and into a small courtyard, ten yards long and eight yards across. A plot of soil, boxed in with wooden planks, took up most of the space. A brazier burned in one corner of the courtyard. A butter-yellow pegasus with a soft, pink mane sat in another, petting a duck. She was Fluttershy, a long-time friend of the Apple family and a longer-time friend of Rainbow Dash.

Applejack picked up a dirty knapsack from next to the brazier and began to unpack it.

“Assassin, are the things I got you for making drones gonna do the job?”

Assassin snorted. “Oh, they’ll work, but it’s still a stupid way to accomplish your task. Fast gestation inside a pony will make stronger drones that don’t need to suckle at our mana to survive.”

“Too dangerous.”

“You run a settlement, Master, surely there are some criminals that nopony would miss?”

“I can’t go crossing that line willy-nilly.”

Assassin groaned. “A mere day after you enter a fight for your life and you’re already hamstringing both of us out of a warped sense of mercy. I would laugh if it weren’t so sickening.”

“I didn’t say I ain’t willing to cross that line, I said I can’t. I’ll explain the difference iffin’ I think it’ll get through yer thick skull. Now, if you’ll kindly start the ritual...”

Assassin grumbled for a moment before nodding to Applejack, who nodded to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, who both nodded back at her. From here, the ritual would be conducted in silence.

Assassin took a pot from the knapsack, filled with tree sap. She opened her mouth and something decidedly non-equine protruded, pulsing and wriggling, before squeezing three droplets out into the pot. She sealed the lid and shook. When she finished, she dropped the pot on the paving at the edge of the courtyard. It shattered, revealing three clear, amber balls that resembled giant frogspawn. These were her ‘cocoons.’

As she did that, Applejack walked into the plot of earth with a trowel in her mouth. She dug three furrows all radiating from a central point, each a yard long, an inch wide and an inch deep. She collected the three cocoons, and planted each of them at the end of the furrows.

She then picked up a watering can, filled at the crack of dawn with four parts riverwater, one part womb-waters from a calving cow, one part egg whites, a teaspoon of her own blood, and a dash of hot sauce. She watered each of the cocoons until the soil was soaked, and then stepped away.

Fluttershy walked onto the soil, cradling the duck under a wing. Rainbow Dash winced. Fluttershy had told her enough about the romantic habits of male mallard ducks that she didn’t feel sorry for the creature, but that wouldn’t make the next part any more pleasant.

The drake was led to the central point of the three furrows, and never saw the sickle that killed him. Fluttershy lopped off his head with an easy stroke and held the body in two hooves above the center point, twitching as blood poured down into the furrows. She pumped and squeezed, pulping the organs inside the body and forcing every available drop of blood and gore out to feed the earth. By the time she was done, tiny flecks of blood had already dried on her face, and the furrows were half-filled. She stepped away, leaving the mallard where it lay.

Applejack bore a bottle of moonshine and gently topped up the furrows with its clear spirit. She took a quarterstaff hewn of applewood with a three-pronged iron claw at one end. She pushed the claw into the brazier, and withdrew a white-hot stone.

She cried, “Hwæt, eorðe byrðre!” and thrust the staff stone-first into the center point of the furrows. The blood and spirits ignited in black fire, and dark flames ran up along the gnarled staff until Applejack forced them back down through sheer strength of will.

There was a rumble. The soil along the furrows crusted over and the flames perished. The three cocoons swelled under the surface, pushing up the soil before breaching like young mushrooms. They grew to the size of softballs, and then to the size of basketballs, and then to the size of a well-fed foal, and larger still.

Each cocoon split as suddenly as it had grown. Some strange and insectoid limbs protruded limply, struggling to claw their way out. Assassin rushed over and began to fuss over the cocoons, peeling each one back in turn until three more beings stood before them on shaky legs.

They looked like a pony if ponies had never existed and the very concept of ‘pony’ was dreamed up by a perverted arachnid. Dark blue chitin took the place of a coat, mandibles replaced jaws, and dragonfly wings replaced feathers. They all chittered weakly, and looked up at Assassin.

“Mother...” they said as one.

“Ah, come to me, my children.” She glanced up sharply at Applejack. “May I take them for feeding? They will be quite the drain on our magic if they are only provided your weak gruel for sustenance, if they survive at all. They need emotion.”

“You go do that,” said Applejack, already packing away the ritual equipment. “In fact, go and carry out your orders.”

Assassin’s eyes narrowed. “Which ones?”

“The fun ones.”

Assassin’s expression changed immediately to a darkly delighted one. “With pleasure,” she purred. With that she took her leave, and scurried out of the courtyard with her three charges.

Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy all got to work packing the equipment away, turning over the soil, and disposing of the waste. They talked softly as they worked, and they worked quickly. Still, the cleanup seemed to take several times as long as the ritual itself, and by the time Fluttershy had disappeared to wash up and Applejack had led her into the sitting room for a chat, Rainbow Dash really felt like a drink. Applejack was happy to provide one.

Sipping at her cider, Rainbow Dash said, “Couldn’t you have got a normal Servant or something?”

Last-Minute Adjustments

Twilight Sparkle never quite felt at home with the Seer Council. Working for them as a warlock had been a refreshing change from her previous job, and far more hooves-on at that, but they were strange in a way that clashed with her own strangeness. They were half-security agency and half-church, born of an ancient organisation that monitored and created prophecies when the Royal Pony Sisters were in power. After Nightmare Moon’s betrayal and Princess Celestia’s sacrifice, they became the keeper’s of Celestia’s legacy. They worked off the apocrypha, the thousands of writings pertaining to the Princesses and saved through the ages, and kept the Sunstone, a weak avatar of Celestia which served as an essential focus even though its personality had lain dormant for centuries. They also maintained bestiaries and instructional tomes to halt magical threats to the realm, taking a special interest in magical creatures and mages who used their powers against the strictures of Celestian ethics.

Twilight found them muddled, and hidebound by tradition. Their dedication to a ‘cult of Celestia’ to prepare for her eventual return seemed tainted with sentiment, a thing to give them a sense of meaning rather than for any practical purpose. Their censorship of profane materials, something Twilight found a laudable goal, was guided more by internal politics than scriptural obedience, and frequently stymied by diplomatic talks with various magecraft organisations. She had left them to join the Royal Guard, and found it a tolerable change.

Still, she was grateful for her time there. They had taught her much about ritual magic.

Not about the theory or execution of ritual magic—she’d known the theory since childhood, and had long since developed her own tastes and designs. They had taught her strategy. Seer Council warlocks needed their rituals to be obtainable, adaptable, and fast. Rituals that employed extended vigils or struggling animals were difficult in the field. That was not the way of a warlock. Warlocks timed their rituals to the second and bought chalk by the barrel.

Twilight could never match their obsession with tradition, but would happily outstrip their obsession with ritual magic. She took their basic tenets—small circles, redundant channels for easy modification, aesthetically pleasing mathematics, plan for last-cast—and built on them. A ritual that could be prepared quickly and easily was good. A ritual that could be prepared instantly and effortlessly was better.

For this purpose, she created a large, clunky ritual to prepare small, fast ones. When she breathed on the pile of chalk dust and sent it scattering across the wax runes, five air elementals appeared from their plane, basking in the energies of strange geometries. They followed the intricate spirals and fractals like moths to a flame, soaking in magic, until they each reached a glass phial at the center of their casting circle.

Twilight corked the five phials, each now filled with a lump of chalk, a scrap of paper, and a happily dazed air elemental the size of a grape. When shattered, the air elemental would fly into a frenzy and draw out a complex casting circle in seconds before returning to its own plane. Fast. Simple. Adaptable.

Satisfied with her efforts, Twilight packed away each phial, cleaned away her casting circle, and then made herself a midnight snack.

Sunset Shimmer walked in a short time later to be greeted by the sight of Twilight eating. She tried not to cringe.

Twilight was an obsessively clean and formal pony in all areas of her life except diet, thought Sunset. The food was bad enough. Twilight seemed to have appetite for nothing but the strongest food. Blistering spices, mind-curdlingly sour sauces, cheeses that stunk of rotting hooves, durians and fermented beans. Tonight’s dish was a morel tindaloo, a curry that was less a curry and more a vengeful pile of chilli seeds in sauce. She had made additions, too. Sunset could see a pickled habanero sticking out of the mess.

Twilight’s table manners were worse than her food choices. She wolfed down the curry with a hoof-sized spoon, splattering hot sauce around her lips and down her chin, noisily gulping her food between chews. She paused only to clear her palate with ice water, which would not stop the heat but only make the next mouthful seem more powerful in comparison. Sweat ran down her brow, her cheeks were bright crimson, and tears ran down her face. Every few mouthfuls, she snuffled her nose into a napkin.

“There’s been a problem,” said Sunset.

Twilight did not look up from her dish. “Mmph?”

“Several hours ago, a guarded mail wagon was robbed. It contained the only extant artifact of Nightmare Moon, one I was planning to have interred safely in our vault during the Grail War.”

The ceramic spoon clattered against the bowl as Twilight funneled the last few mouthfuls of mushroom curry into her waiting maw. She wiped her mouth and then her snout with the same napkin, brushed away the sweat on her brow with a fetlock, and looked at Sunset. “You don’t think this is a coincidence.” It was a statement of fact.

“Too much of a coincidence.” Sunset laughed mirthlessly. “The Apple Clan are likely suspects, being both resourceful and shameless. House Blueblood lacks the spine to do something like this, and I don’t think that the Griffic Seer Society has the inclination to summon an equine Servant. Maybe the Manehattan Society have decided to field a player... Regardless, this requires a change of strategy.”

Twilight stood, and summoned two glasses of cider. “What do you suggest?”

“Nightmare Moon will almost certainly pursue Archer, seeking revenge,” said Sunset, “which means that Archer can no longer hide while Caster baits our trap. She will be hunted, and even though she could almost certainly defeat the betrayer in a one-on-one battle, she will no longer be able to act freely.”

“We know the identity of another Servant, at least,” said Twilight. “No sensible Master would forgo such a powerful being.”

“This is true, and we have records of Nightmare Moon’s life and personality. All serious scholars agree that she was the weaker sister, unable to match Princess Celestia either on the field of battle or in personal combat. She was unable to match her sister in honorable pursuits, and became consumed by jealousy. She succeeded through demagoguery, dark magic, hostage-taking, and murder. Her skill in the dark forces were matched only by her viciousness and cowardice.”

“Then Nightmare Moon will be either Assassin or Caster. And we already have Caster.”

Sunset nodded. “Therefore, we are expecting Nightmare Moon, as Assassin, to pursue Archer. Because Archer is a target, it now makes more sense to pair her with you. You no longer need to create and bait traps with Caster, because you have your bait ready. You know far better than I how an assassin and infiltrator thinks, and you can keep them held up long enough for Caster and I to bring backup, wall them in, and destroy them utterly.” A grim smile crossed her face. “We can destroy a third of the competition before the others realise what is happening. Two Servants will remain, and once we goad them to fight each other...”

“We will be prepared,” said Twilight.

* * *

Polaris Blueblood was once again checking his equipment.

The barding was moonstone, a pale grey metal that only shone at night. Heavier than mithril and weaker than steel, but it could bear enchantments in a way that few other metals could. He ran his magic over it, probing the surface for missing runes or internal cracks, anything that could compromise the charms of speed, evasion, and shielding. He checked the straps for stress and the padding for wear. All flawless, just as before.

His two hornblades were sheathed on the left pauldron of the barding. Endurance, the Blueblood family sword, was his main weapon. Thick-bladed, far heavier than a normal hornblade, and unwieldy in the hooves of anypony but an expert fencer. It could channel magic like no other weapon and make its edge burn with cold, crackle with death, or cut through the void itself. Mercy was his second sword, a fencer’s blade that he had trained with since foalhood. It felt lighter than air, handled beautifully, and seemed to know what he wanted before he did. He checked both scabbards. Both oiled, both secured, neither snag nor drag for either of them.

The peytral was not a true piece of armor, it was instead a dozen different artifacts build into a moonstone frame. Three amulets were set in a column, one to grant luck, one to amplify his magical prowess, and one to shield his mind from attack. A dozen enchanted rings were set into the metal, powerful treasures of the Blueblood family, granting boons on the wearer and curses on their enemies. Lining the edges of the peytral were a hundred aquamarine gems, each holding a bound spell to be unleashed at the wearer’s command. The moonstone itself only held one enchantment: a spell which masked the presence of the piece from anypony of the Blueblood line who did not bear a Command Spell. Polaris smiled grimly at the inscription. If not for that charm, one of his uncles would have surely pawned it decades ago.

The bracers bore lighthoof charms that would allow him to fall from great heights unscathed, walk on clouds, and run on water. The cloak was woven spiderweb, impenetrable by all but powerful magical blades, and enchanted with an aura of displacement. While he wore it, he would never quite be where an opponent took aim. Only through absurd luck or sheer volume could an attack actually strike him. It also made him near-impossible to scry, allowing him to mask his identity or become invisible at-will.

His equipment was essential. That was the only reason he’d been fussing over it for the last hour. It had nothing to do with the cold, grasping feeling that ran from his throat to his stomach.

Rarity came through the door, bearing two cups of coffee. “You’re still awake.”

“You wouldn’t have brought coffee if you thought I was asleep.”

Rarity gave him the same odd half-smile that was so frequent lately. “You’ve been up this late every night for two weeks.”

“I am... worried,” he said. “I am unprepared. I can never be prepared.”

“Nopony can be prepared for this,” she replied, softly. “You have done all you can, and that’s so much more than most ponies in your position could dream of achieving.”

Polaris nodded, and was silent for a moment. He swallowed. “I... I keep thinking of Hoofington. I was there for three days, and I wasn’t even there for the worst of it... I saw a foal, younger than your sister, prying the shoes off a dead pony’s hooves. For pennies. None of it had to happen. It could have been prevented, if not for the pride and greed of Honeywine and dozens of other bastards, and it won’t stop there.”

He looked down, and sighed. “If I fail, that is the fate that awaits all of Canterlot, and from there all of Equestria. The Grail’s prize will fall to squabbling mages, and everything I have worked to accomplish will be for nothing.”

Rarity set her coffee aside, and placed a hoof on Polaris’ withers. “You have a powerful Servant and powerful magic, and you are playing by different rules. Your opponents must defeat every other Servant to win. You need only defeat one.”

“My opponents have trained their whole lives...”

“In your own way, so have you. They will underestimate you, and it will prove their downfall.”

A small smile worked its way across Blueblood’s face. He took a pull of his coffee. “You have a point.”

“Yes, I do. Now, it’s time for bed.”

He turned back to his equipment, shaking his head. “I won’t sleep after drinking coffee.”

She moved forward, nuzzling him, and nipped at the hollow of his throat. As he gasped, she grabbed his coffee in shaky telekinesis and set it on the floor. “I said nothing about sleeping...”

“Rarity, I—”

She shushed him with a kiss. Her lips were soft yet forceful, tasting of mint and coffee. He kissed back, grasping her thick mane in a hoof, slipping his tongue between her teeth. He bit her ear, earning a delighted coo before she turned, wrapped her tail over his neck and, led him to the bed. They fell onto the mattress together, giggling.

Rarity smiled as she wriggled in close. “I wanted to marry you, once.”

Polaris put a hoof on her cheek. “Once, I wanted to ask for your hoof.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I did.”

She laughed, and hooked her hind legs in between his own. “You wanted the idea of marrying me, but not the actual reality of it. It would have changed everything, and not all for the better. Your family would be far less pleasant, to say nothing of all the mages and merchants and peers who see you as a bargaining chip and me as the help. Besides, look at us. We’re not the type of ponies who would marry for love of all things.”

“Yes I suppose that’s true,” he said, burying his muzzle in her neck, “and it would have interfered with my vow to remain a bachelor.”

She moaned softly. “Mmph. I hope you didn’t take any vows of chastity, my lord?”

“Certainly not.”

“What a pity. I can’t just tease you all night and leave you dangling.”

“That’s always an option, my dear.” They kissed more, turning down the lights and dragging the warm duvets up over them.

Polaris stopped, suddenly. “Rarity...”

“Mmhm?” She looked up at him with big blue eyes.

“I—I don’t know if we should. What you said the other night...” He swallowed, again. “I don’t want to hurt you. I know it might happen anyway, but I don’t want to hurt you more.”

“Polaris,” she whispered, “I wasn’t lying when I said it hurt.” She cuddle him closer, planting a kiss on his breast bone, then up to his neck, and then a third on his jaw. “But darling, I also wasn’t lying when I said I accepted it completely. It’s the right thing to do.”

She kissed him once more on the lips, and nipped his ear. “Right now, I don’t want to wonder what could have been. I want to act on those desire. I want you.”

Polaris kissed her back, and turned off the lights. “You have me.”

Dark Horse

Trixie paid the driver with money stolen from Sunset Shimmer’s room and got out of the chariot. She was breathing hard under the weight of her heavy-duty saddlebags, which were still a burden despite her quick-and-dirty feather charm. Tucked between the straps of her saddlebags was a rolled-up copy of the Canterlot Times, and an enchanted kitchen knife lay sheathed inside for easy retrieval. These hills weren’t as dangerous as the Everfree, or even some of the darker alleys in Canterlot, but wolves or the odd lost manticore were no joke.

The night wind whipped her mane across her face. She wore only her saddlebags and a thin, purple cape. She wished for the warmth of the chariot once more, but began to walk deep into the hills.

She had spent the trip from Canterlot re-reading the notebook, cross-referencing it with her textbooks and absorbing as much information as she could manage. The notebook had taught her much already.

The Grail War. A magical contest between the most powerful mages in Equestria, with a wish for the winner.

The contest alone would allow Trixie to prove herself a real mage, to hire out her services to anyone who needed them, and to make her miserable gate-keeping detractors back off. But a wish? With a wish, she could literally do anything! Riches, fame and fortune! She could help her family, her entire extended family, and let them live like pampered nobles. Or better, she could help everypony instead of hoarding magic for herself like Sunset Shimmer and every other greedy bastard mage involved would. Everypony in Equestria could have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads, and they wouldn’t have to desperately scrabble each winter just not to die alone in the cold. All of Equestria would know her, Trixie would be a hero, a harmonic soul, and they would sing praises in her name forevermore!

Not that it would be that simple. She had to win this thing first.

A new set of thoughts, fears, and fantasies had bloomed in her mind with every passage she had read.

’—each Servant is a powerful figure from legend, summoned by a Master to fight in the war. The Servants usually do the bulk of the fighting, and once a Servant is destroyed, the Master loses their command spells and is no longer a participant—’

That had been a relief. Trixie was talented, but Sunset Shimmer’s power was literally terrifying. If they were going to battle, she’d need a powerful proxy backing her. And now, Trixie would have the Servant that Sunset had originally desired...

’—Servants fit into one of five possible vessels, created by the Grail: Archer, Lancer, Assassin, Saber, and Caster. Heroes are placed into classes depending on their traits in life. Although the summoning ritual can influence class selection to a degree, the Grail ranks and chooses which Servant is most suitable for a given class—’

This was interesting. What would best suit her? The martial might of a Lancer or Saber, backed by her illusions and magic? The destructive power of Archer? Assassin’s stealth? Or Caster’s raw magical power? It was probably moot, but still fascinating to contemplate.

’—Master receives three command spells. A command spell channels the magical energies of the Master through the Servant, and can either force a Servant to do something they are unwilling or reluctant to do, or instead provide a boost of power to certain pursuits. Command spells should only be used to bend Servants in dire circumstances, as an angered Servant can turn on their Master (c.f. Berryshine of House Blackstar in the fourth Grail War)—’

...Not exactly a reassuring thought, thought Trixie, but nothing to despair over. She had charisma, and if a pony like Sunset Shimmer could charm a Servant, so could she.

’—the existence of a Noble Phantasm. A Noble Phantasm (NP) is a treasure, weapon or ability linked so strongly with a Servant’s legend that Servant and Phantasm are essentially inseparable. For example, all legends and records of Commander Hurricane of Pegasopolis state that he had total mastery of the weather around him. When he was summoned into the Archer vessel in the seventh Grail War, his NP was the Banner of Storms, a standard that controlled weather absolutely. He could bring down columns of lightning indoors, or drown a city in sudden floods, crush his targets with melon-sized hailstones, and even create storms of fire or acid—’

Rain started to splatter on Trixie’s nose as she walked through the dark scrubland. She thought of that passage, and wanted that banner right now simply to keep the wind and rain off of her.

’—are constructs created by the Grail and hence are imbued with knowledge of the modern era and of the rules of the Grail War—’

Another relief. Trixie did not relish the thought of having to slowly learn old Equine before she could exchange anything more than confused hoof gestures with her Servant.

—though each Servant is created by the Grail, a certain power threshold must be reached to successfully summon one. An underpowered ritual, if it works at all, could lead to a maddened Servant, a Servant placed in the wrong class, or simply a Servant with weaker abilities than normal. A strong bond between Master and Servant can improve the Servant’s abilities, but the optimal solution is to ensure enough power is available for the summoning. This can be accomplished by reagent decomposition, the mage’s own supply of magic, or a magically-enriched summoning environment—

That part was challenging. Trixie was a better mage than most—she passed the brutally difficult end of year exams at the Canterlot Academy for two years running, where half of her compatriots failed each year. But this was no mere exam, it was a contest between some of the most powerful mages in Equestria. She knew she did not have the sheer raw life-force that a mage like Sunset Shimmer could bring to bear.

Still, she had a plan.

First, she had her life savings. Not money, the only money to her name was the near-empty purse of bits she’d stolen from Sunset Shimmer’s room. Her life savings were magic.

All the various little charms and tokens and items she’d cobbled together over the years, the enchanted anti-cheating pencils she’d stolen for exam ‘practice’, the everpepper mill, the wand of venereal discomfiture, the potions of third-eye, a deck of tarot cards, the staff of whispering, the collar of pity, a gallon jug of healing salve, the tiny vial of vampony dust, a bottle of mitebane, exploding soap, a crystal relay, her first spellbook, and dozens of other things she had collected, bought, bartered, borrowed and stolen over the years. These were her life savings. She had even gone on a quick tour of the academy before she left, stealing windcheater charms off awnings, dust from casting rooms, chippings of rock from the oldest buildings. All of these things were currently weighing down her saddlebags and squeezing her ribcage with every step.

Second, she had a place. It had taken her a day’s chariot from Canterlot and another hour on hoof to get there, but she could see her destination on the horizon.

Ghastly Gorge, a series of canyons north of the Everfree, which was once the site of a terrible battle between the ancient Royal Pony Sisters. They had fought with such ferocity that they rent the ground beneath them and filled the earth with unknown magic. The canyons were expansive enough to hide in, and dangerous enough that sane ponies avoided it entirely. The cliffs were swarming with quarry eels, and... well, the quarry eels were dangerous enough that anything more would be superfluous.

She made camp atop the cliffs, a hundred yards from the edge. She laid down her bags, pitched her tent, and cast a few illusions to keep wildlife away. Her campsite was ready. She brewed a pot of cheap coffee over a tiny paraffin stove and looked at the pony-sized pile of magical items she had brought with her.

Trixie would use only three of these items. A dart of stunning, attached to the end of a javelin which she had misappropriated from the academy gymnasium. Her sandals of speed, which tingled the moment they touched her hooves. Finally, a shot of accuracy, a potion she had used a few times to earn money by cheating at darts.

She also had a fishing rod and a dead pigeon, but both of those were entirely mundane in origin.

Coffee finished, she steeled herself and approached the canyon. At the clifftop, she heard a rumbling. In the darkness, shapes scurried out of the cliff face and into the air. She baited the rod with the pigeon, and tossed the line over the edge.

A few minutes later, one of the dark shapes came out to sniff at it. She reeled it in, the creature still sniffing at the meat as it rose up the cliff.

Just as the freakish maw came a foot from the edge, she downed the shot of accuracy, hefted the javelin, and hurled it at the creature. It shrieked with rage and wriggled over the edge to fight off its attacker. It was scales and teeth and twisted muscle, and it almost bit Trixie in half with a single lunge. Only her sandals of speed allowed her to dodge it.

The beast pursued her relentlessly, swimming over grass and dirt like a shark through water, javelin still embedded in its skin. Trixie dodged and dived until the attacks turned into clumsy thrashing. Seconds later, it was still, utterly paralyzed by the magical dart. Just in time, too. Trixie could already feel the enchantments on her sandals fading from use.

Trixie had caught herself a juvenile quarry eel, the only creature around here that could provide enough fresh blood for her ritual. She bound it in rope, and began to drag the beast back to her campsite.

The moon was still high in the sky when Trixie had finished her preparations. Textbooks pilfered from the library lay at the side of the ritual circle. Her hooves were covered in chalk dust and eel blood. Her teeth chattered from nerves and excitement. She double-checked the dimensions of her circles, triple-checked the reagents, nervously eyed her mound of treasures sitting inside a triangle of salt, and re-read the summoning ritual guidelines for the last time.

’—as long as the components are in place, an actual invocation of some kind is made, and the magical release is triggered, the content of the invocation is merely an internal anchor, designed to keep the mage’s magic flow directed properly. As such, the exact wording is entirely to the mage’s taste, as the words simply help the mage direct how the ritual should occur—’

Trixie scrunched her eyes shut, and pictured the words she’d scribbled on a scrap of parchment. She went over them three times in her head before she spoke.

“S-servant,” she stammered,

“I bind you to my service,”

“To fight for fame and glory and honor,”

“To share the Grail,”

“A-and,” she swallowed, words almost failing her, “to show those academy nags who’s boss!”

Her horn sparked, lighting the candle before her. The wind whipped and dark clouds gathered above. Every hair on her body stood on end as raw power flowed between her mind, her horn, and the ritual. Each line of chalk and salt lit up. The pools of eel blood glowed with black light. Her pile of magical treasures crackled in a blaze of energy, and as darkness closed in around her eyes, she saw it burst into blue flames.

It was over.

Trixie coughed, the taste of sour smoke on her tongue. She was in total darkness. She looked ahead, and gasped.

A figure, three times the size of a pony, sat in the middle of the blackened ritual circle

The clouds passed and moonlight shone.

She was an alicorn of terrible strength and beauty, cloaked in night. Cradled in the alicorn’s right hoof was a ten-foot spear. Teal eyes locked with Trixie’s, and she pointed an armor-clad hoof at the mare.

“You,” boomed the alicorn, “are my Master!”

Trixie’s jaw worked, and no sound came out. A full ten seconds passed, before she could squeak out:

“...Yes?”

Old Souls

The malachite melted into a slick, green pool under the ray of energy, spreading across the floor until it filled the borders of the salt square. At first it appeared to dimly reflect the room above, but the dark-green image shifted until it was clearly reflecting a different room entirely.

“Everything is in place at Amethyst Manor, Twilight,” said Sunset Shimmer. “You can step through the portal whenever you are ready.”

Twilight nodded. “Thank you. Only contact me with the predetermined codes.” She took a step toward the portal, but stopped short. “Oh, and good luck.”

A baby dragon burst through the door, a frantic-looking mare chasing after him.

Twilight turned her head sharply. “Spike, you need to go with Twinkleshine or you’ll be waiting in the cold for the next train.”

The purple dragon ran to Twilight and hugged her as tight as his arms could manage. She folded a fore over his shoulders in an approximation of a hug.

“I can’t go yet, Twilight!”

“Spike—”

He looked straight upwards, into her eyes. “Promise me you’re gonna come back safe, okay? I’ll go to Manehattan, but you gotta promise me!”

Twilight sighed, but did not release her hug. “Don’t be foolish, Spike. Professor Shimmer and I are going on a dangerous mission. If I could make that promise, I wouldn’t need to send you to safety with Twinkleshine.”

He began to cry. Through tears he said, “You can’t say that, you can’t just go...” before breaking down into sobbing.

Twilight looked conflicted. “Spike, we are both powerful mages, we both have powerful Servants, and our alliance gives us a clear edge over the other Masters. We have done all we can to prepare, we are in the best possible position to survive, and we can ask no more than that.” She tried to pat him reassuringly, but it came off as compulsive tapping.

Sunset walked over, and put a hoof on Spike’s shoulder. “C’mere, Spike, look at me.”

He cautiously broke away from his embrace. “Auntie Sunset?”

She looked him in the eyes. “Me and Twilight are working together. I swear on my heart, my soul, and all of my magic that I will bring her home safe.”

His sobs died down, and he sniffled. “What about you?”

Sunset laughed. “Spike, you don’t even need to worry about me. I’m a stone-cold badass, as the foals these days say. But, tell you what...”

She got up and walked to a painting of Canterlot on the wall. She took it down, opened the back of the frame, and pulled out a piece of parchment from inside. She showed it to Spike.

“This,” said Sunset, “is my note of inheritance. My dad gave it to me when I was, oh, maybe a year older than you? It says I’m the first heir of the family magecraft, that I must use my skills for the benefit of ponykind, and that I must honor my family. Take it.” She offered him the parchment.

He carefully took the paper. “Why are you giving me this?”

“Because one day, I’m giving this piece of paper to my own foal. This scrap of parchment is my most treasured possession. It’s been in my family for three-hundred years. You’re going to keep it safe for me, for a month or so. And I swear I’ll be back for it. Can you keep it safe for me, Spike?”

He nodded, eyes wide, and gave an odd little salute. “O-of course. You can count on me!”

“Good.” She clapped him on the back. “Now scram, you little ratbag, before you make Twinkleshine late for the train.”

“Hey, I’m not little!”

Sunset grinned like a shark. “Then how come I can do this?” She pulled three feathers from thin air and began to tickle the dragon relentlessly, until he was guffawing on the floor.

“Gyaah! Stop, okay, I’m going,” he giggled. The feathers disappeared and he got to his feet. He kissed both Sunset and Twilight on the cheek, got a normal hug from the former, and a painfully solid hug from the latter.

When he was gone, Twilight turned to Sunset. “Thank you for handling that. He seemed upset.”

Sunset smiled. “He’s a good kid. He’ll be okay.”

* * *

Sunset Shimmer chose the academy’s elemental sciences casting theatre for her summoning location. It was where she’d learned the true arts of fire magic, where she taught them, and was utterly secure in her power here.

She had spent the afternoon binding and summoning six elemental spirit into a single crystal. The confinement enraged them, and they fought each other within their tiny prison. The sheer violence inside could be harnessed and obviate the need for blood sacrifice in the ritual. Afterwards, they would be released harmlessly to their planes of origin.

Two of her senior apprentices scurried about, attending to the fine details of the summoning. Sunset had ordered them to create the ritual to her specifications. This was both valuable training for her apprentices, who both had the talents for great deeds in the future, and it freed her to concentrate on logistical issues. She went through the thaum-current checklist with one apprentice while the other double-checked the runes, adjusted the ambient pressures, and calculated temperature flows.

Sunset placed the elemental crystal in the channeling brazier, where it was quickly surrounded by flame. She cast in the activation reagents. Void salts. Spider eggs. Drake bile. Caster sugar, Copper salts. Sipping whisky.

Her lines were rehearsed. The lights were dimmed. The helpers shooed.

Sunset Shimmer was ready.

She took the summoning focus, an ancient, hoof-written grimoire from her family’s private archive, and placed it in the center of the ritual circle. She intended to summon Caster, and would do so with powerful reagents, a powerful link, and the power of nine archmages coursing through her body.

She began.

“Five! Stand to summon, and let course, strange powers through veins, of deepest source.”

“Four! Vessels emptied, caught in strife, strings all cut by darkest knife.”

“Three! Commands, to bargain or bind, squandered by fools, the unwise and the blind.”

“Two! Master and Servant, connected by spark, and Master and Master, allied in dark.”

“One! A wish, I summon you, an oath, I bind you, and change your fate once more!”

“Ai! Ai! Ai!”

“To this circle, appear, and fight in my name!”

There was a subtle, quiet shift in reality. A well-conceived ritual with proper designs and reagents rarely had any explosions or lightening or dimming of the lights, no wastes of energy. Only a brief flash of purple, and then a pony in the middle of the ritual circle.

He was an old pony, yet still strong of sinew and stature, clad in fine blue robes and a pointed wizard hat with golden bells on the rim. A wispy, white beard flowed down to his breast bone. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he beamed at Sunset.

In a voice like plum pudding, he said “Hello, young lady.” He glanced around the room, thin, white eyebrows shooting up as he saw the preparations around him. “Lovely summoning circle, by the way. Very crisp runes. It warms the heart to see a mage who pays proper attention to their calligraphy.”

Sunset gave a courteous tip of the head. “Why, thank you.

“Yes, a rather nice arrangement indeed,” continued the old stallion. “Why, this whole summoning theatre—doric columns, primary and secondary pulpits, refractive domes—it rather reminds me of the old workshops in Unicornia.”

“It’s based on the old Unicornian designs, actually. Most of the older buildings on the campus are.”

The stallion gave a curious smile. “Oh? I surmise that Unicornia was quite some time ago, judging from my surroundings. You are a student of history then, I take it?”

“Among other things,” she replied. “I am Professor Sunset Shimmer, a scholar of magic.”

“Ah! Well met, then,” said the stallion. “Star Swirl the Bearded, at your service.”

* * *

In the cellar of Amethyst Manor, Twilight Sparkle surveyed her preparations.

Her casting glyphs were tight and complex, the components were cheap, and the circle could fit inside a kitchenette. Normally, she would have said the words, sparked the circuit, and been done with it. Something itched at the back of her brain this time, though. It wasn’t worry, Twilight didn’t do worry.

It was something like the sudden realisation of gravity, as you stand on the edge of a cliff.

Conjuration had been the most difficult school for Twilight to master, not because of the complexity of the rituals—correctly-applied necromancy was far more challenging—but because of all the cloying sentiment of it all. Twilight loathed sentiment.

Half of conjuration consisted of fuzzy-minded poetry. Standing vigils, prayers to uncaring spirits, mumbling at statues, dribbly candles in place of correct ambiance... nearly all of it was a collection of poorly-conceived hacks and cludges, rote learning in place of proper enquiry, and an utter lack of philosophical rigor. She had only authored eight academic papers on conjuration, all of which felt like a tedious exercise in bringing up freshmare-level thinking into correct scientific thought, and altogether barely scratched the surface of discipline's pervasive mediocrity.

This felt different. The golden tiara in the center of the casting circle was a scientifically sound anchor, but it felt... inadequate. It gnawed at her. She had worked for the Seer Council, where any of her colleagues would have given their lives for an opportunity like this. They were surely tainted by dogma, but still it seemed... crass, to pay this ritual no more respect than summoning a fire sprite or dreamcatcher.

She went upstairs, and returned shortly afterwards with a small marble statuette. She placed it at the far end of the circle from her position. The tiny statue’s eyes seemed to bore into her own, but the thought of removing it made her even more uncomfortable.

It would simply have to do.

She took a breath, and said the incantation:

“Servant, I bind you here to grant my wish and change your fate.”

She shot a beam from her horn. Lightning crackled and smoke rose from the chalk. She paid it no mind, a little noise and light was an acceptable compromise for cheap reagents.

Power danced through her veins, along the lines and swirls and runes that danced to her command, shooting through into the tiara, the focus.

Twilight’s vision went white.

When she opened her eyes, the entire basement was brightly lit as if the sky had opened over it. The chalk dust had risen in cloud, appearing as a shining mist.

A majestic alicorn stood before her, her coat as white as summer clouds, her mane flowing like the northern lights. She was clad in gold regalia, wore a gentle smile, and her eyes seemed older than time itself.

Twilight could not help herself. “Celestia...”

The alicorn spread her wings and rose to her hooves, as a halo of pure light manifested behind her.

“I am here, my child.”

Excursion

The flight to the border was punishing. Sharp, stinging snow whipped through the air, crusting the edges of Rainbow Dash’s flight goggles, buffeting her wings. Speed was not a problem for her, even in these harsh conditions, but keeping a steady pace was essential. Without it, Fluttershy would drop out of her slipstream, slowing them down considerably.

They arrived at a mountain pass forty miles west of Griffhala. Though the snow had stopped here, the ground was frozen, and the few patches of grass were hard and woody. No ponies lived around here, thanks to the harsh conditions and predators. Griffons lived in Griffhala, but those that lived there rarely ventured out, and those that left for Equestria returned home rarer still.

A rocky outcropping became their hiding place. They wore burlap cloaks coated in rocks and clumps of grass. In the dull afternoon light, they could only be seen while moving. By nightfall, they would be invisible. Fluttershy called an eagle to her, praising and petting it, while Rainbow Dash scrawled distances on a piece of cardboard and prepared her equipment. The two ponies did not eat or talk as the hours dragged on.

Darkness fell. The eagle left, and returned some time later. He chittered into Fluttershy’s ear.

Fluttershy turned to her friend. “They’re coming.”

Both ponies activated the charms on their goggles. They could see the mountain pass once more in the pitch-black night, the ultravision charms turning the view into a washed-out approximation of daylight.

They had practiced this part many times. Fluttershy put her eye to a tripod-mounted spotting scope. Rainbow Dash lifted her weapon, a Wand of Disjunction, mounted on a frame with a butt-stock and a scope. She took the trigger-bit into her mouth, and nodded.

“West by northwest, eight-hundred yards long, two-hundred yards up,” whispered Fluttershy.

Rainbow Dash twitched her wing once for ‘understood.’ After lining up her scope, she twitched her wing differently for ‘target acquired.’

A patrol of ten, six pegasi and four griffons, all guarding a lone sky-wagon. Rainbow Dash waited until they were five-hundred yards away, lined up the wagon, and bit down on the trigger. A black bolt fizzed from the wand, and silently hit its target a second later.

In the sky, the wagon shuddered and twisted. Its skyworthiness spell had disintegrated, and now it plunged towards the ground. The patrol members shouted in shock, diving to grab the wagon, slow its descent, and activate the emergency floatation runes. They managed to slow its descent, bringing it to a shuddering stop a hundred yards away from their hidden assailants.

Rainbow Dash kept the wand trained on the patrol. If one of the pegasi or griffons were a mage, the attack would be obvious. They would cast countermeasures and begin to search for the caster. At the first sign of magic from the patrol, Rainbow Dash would fire a second bolt of disjunction, temporarily disabling the enemy caster before switching to conventional weapons.

There were no spells cast, no contingencies or sequencers, no yells of alarm beyond cursing and grumbling at the fickleness of magecraft and the uselessness of artificers. Rainbow Dash watched as the patrol set to work, establishing a perimeter, repairing the wagon, and sending out sentries.

Two teams left the wagon to scout the area, each consisting of one griffon and one pony. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy hid their equipment and stalked after the first patrol.

A bird squawked. The first signal. Rainbow Dash began to count down. “Five. Four. Three. Two...”

Fluttershy struck first, looping a garotte around the neck of the griffon. As his comrade turned to look, Rainbow Dash lunged and slammed her hoofblade into the pony’s throat. The pony fell, dead, and Rainbow Dash set upon the griffon, stabbing him in the belly as Fluttershy strangled him.

The second patrol would find their dead friends in six seconds. After four seconds, an eagle screeched from the opposite direction. When seven seconds had passed, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had killed this pair too.

As the two ponies approached the wagon, their allies slunk from the undergrowth. Black-furred wolves, friends of Fluttershy, who moved in perfect silence.

Six targets remained. Four ponies, two griffons. Both griffons worked on the wagon. Two ponies stood in the shelter of a rock, fumbling to light their cigarettes. Two more ponies stood watch. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash crept onto the rock, close enough to smell the cheap tobacco, and signalled to the wolves.

Two wolves lunged at the sentries, pushing them down through sheer velocity and bodyweight, before another half-dozen wolves followed, tearing them apart in a mess of snapping jaws. The smokers didn’t have a chance to react, one stabbed to death by Rainbow Dash, the other’s neck snapping between Fluttershy’s hooves. The griffons by the wagon had a chance to draw their weapons. As they weighed up their chances at fight or flight, an eagle swooped, tearing a gash in the back of one. The distraction proved lethal: the wolfpack attacked, and made short work of the final guards.

Rainbow Dash cleaned off her knife and surveyed the scene. The fading thrill of combat raced through her veins. She felt nothing at killing griffons, and even less at killing Cloudsdale pegasi. The only members of that shrike-nest worth grieving left it by choice. Fluttershy made a sport of killing Cloudsdalers, actively delighting in letting her little friends eat ‘long chicken.’ Rainbow didn’t blame her. As much as she herself had suffered at the hooves of that ‘society,’ Fluttershy had got it far worse.

They opened the wagon. A bag of rations, a bag of smuggled tobacco, and a strongbox. This was Fluttershy’s expertise. Rainbow Dash never had the patience or stomach to learn magic from the Apple family, and while Fluttershy was no mage, she had proved an apt pupil at applied enchantments. In another life, she would have made an excellent vet or doctor, mused Rainbow. In this life, she brought out her cracking tools.

The safe was swaddled in simple but destructive curses, enough to cause the consumptive deaths of an entire bandit party if they chose to waylay this particular cargo. It was simple to strip away, glowing faintly and stinking of soured hay. The lock proved more complex. Fluttershy spent twenty minutes drilling careful holes into the lock before she was satisfied. She checked it one last time for traps, then opened the door.

Rainbow Dash looked inside. A bottle of anise liqueur from the Camel Sultanates. A small pouch of uncut star-sapphires. Enough ritual reagents to make a demilich envious. A package containing two things: a set of notes, and a scabbard. Rainbow Dash did not need the notes to identify the leather scabbard.

She swallowed. “Jeez, ‘Shy, you know what this is? It’s Young Zephyr’s scabbard. He was like, the most powerful of the Heroes of the Four Winds. When he turned evil, he was practically a god.” She passed the scabbard to Fluttershy. “You can feel the murder pouring off this thing, it’s like making eye contact with a birthday clown!”

Rainbow Dash began to pace as Fluttershy examined the scabbard. “Looks like Applejack’s intel was right, the griffons had their own plan for the Grail War. I don’t even want to think what one of their mages could have done with him as a Servant. We just need to figure out what to do with it—”

There was a gentle fwoosh as Fluttershy set the scabbard on fire.

“Fluttershy what the hay!?” screamed Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy’s eyes widened in panic. She dropped the scabbard and her heated cracking tool, and tried to stomp out the flames, but only succeeded in disintegrating it further. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“You burned the scabbard!”

“I know, I’m so sorry! It was evil, I thought I should just burn it!”

“Yeah it’s evil but that’s like, history you’re burning. You can’t burn history, Fluttershy!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Especially not awesome history like griffon history—okay, don’t worry.” Rainbow Dash let out a breath. “It’s not a problem. AJ’s never had any use for griffon stuff, it was totally evil, and the important thing is that nobird can use it now. But girl, you need to chill before doing something like that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool,” said Rainbow Dash. “Grab the sapphires and the ritual ingredients. I’ll torch the wagon, then we can go.”

Fluttershy nodded, and looked around at the carnage. “What should we do with the bodies?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Leave ‘em. Your friends look hungry.”

Ancestral

The chapel in Bluestone Manor was a relic of an older age, built centuries before the line of Blueblood became a true noble house. It existed principally as a fane for ancestor worship. Fanciful scenes decorated the spandrels, and the ceiling was a work of intricate fan-vaulting. Unlike conventional Equestrian chapels with their colorful iconostases along the interior, each wall of the nave bore a long stone ambry, lined with recessed arched compartments. Each compartment held a bust of a long-defunct member of House Blueblood. They were prayed to, celebrated, and remembered. Hundreds more busts and other relics lay in the manor crypt; they were displayed in the chapel depending on religious requirements.

The line of House Blueblood was many and varied. Among the visages were Quirt the Vehement, the fervent cleric who stopped the Bovine Civil War from tearing early Equestria apart, Mansefurd the Heterodox, who established the Eight Minor Schools of Philosophy, Wise Keppar, the explorer who wrote her Book of Places as she mapped out the known world, the stern faces of Auric Auricsson, and his son, Auric, son of Auricsson, the unparalleled beauty of Princess Platinum IX, and her Diamond Daughters, Lattice, Brilliance, and Adamas.

One bust had been removed from its compartment and placed on the altar. Prince Platinum III, the Patron Prince. The bust gazed ahead solemnly, as his distant ancestor, Duke Polaris Blueblood, surveyed his preparations.

Polaris’ ritual circle was plain and unpretentious, little more than an enclosed octagram connecting eight candles. Between the circle and the altar was a steel bowl of water, in which floated a lone lily. Aside from the ancestral bust, the altar also held a potion of rejuvenation for use after the ritual, and a lamp of clarified butter with a wick of dried thyme, the family herb. Presently, it wafted thick, fragrant smoke through the chapel.

Polaris turned his head, and his vision went wavy and unfocused. He recast Peppendale’s Minor Cantrip of Alacrity. The exhaustion did not leave him, but the spell strengthened the connection between mind and body, allowing him to mentally push himself through the ritual. He had been awake for seventy-two hours, performing a mixture of physically punishing calisthenics and mentally taxing Brahman meditation, all part of the vigil before the summoning.

Before the cast, he had a final preparation to make. He took a list of private sins and burned it in the butter lamp, letting the ashes crumble into the lily pool, praying to the old gods as he did. The names of Lamrei the Originator, Glashtyn of the First Seas, and Wayfaring Enbarr passed his lips.

Many mages—one or two of them his former tutors—would have turned their noses up at such a setup, for being vague, philosophically inexact, and thaumaturgically inefficient. They would replace the lily pool and butter lamp with Oil of Inflorescence, they would deride the chapel, prayer and ancestral busts as mere superstition, and offer a mathematically correct sacrifice of roosters in place of the more personal oblation that the Duke of Blueblood had in mind.

They were fools. For all their insistence otherwise, thaumaturgy was not a science. It was barely a discipline. It was mathematics in the days of stone tablets listing Pythagorean triples, discovered through trial and error as much as logic. They thought they could understand magic. Hubris! Magic as ponies knew it was not a set of logical operators, it was a cookbook bequeathed by ancient and nigh-incomprehensible demiurges.

They were cowards. They eschewed what magic would not fall within their rules, that which might harm the caster, that which could not be scaled up or down or crossways in a comprehensible manner. If it could not be occluded, combined, or dispelled it was treated with fear and suspicion, only added to a mage’s repertoire if she could at least feign understanding. What parsimony! What contemptible stinginess, to disregard tools to further a great cause until safety and comprehension are utterly assured!

Polaris was no savant. He knew not why eggs turn opaque and solid when heated. This would not stop him from making an omelette. He chose his spells from older grimoires, from a time where mages were unafraid to grope blindly. Magic had its own soul, and it was as mischievous as the souls of art or mathematics.

Polaris knew that if you asked much of magic, you must be prepared to give much in return.

The last sunlight of the afternoon fell through the stained-glass windows of the chancel, spreading a blaze of color over the altar. The chapel was now utterly silent. The rest of the manor was well-guarded. Though Rarity was not a trained mage, she had been taught enough magecraft to tell a wand from a ward, and used her minor magical skill to supervise the array of guardian magic that kept Bluestone Manor unmolested. In addition, Polaris’ Caucasian Shepherd, Kuschel, roamed the halls, as well as the manor familiars.

The familiars were items enchanted by ancestor spirits, predecessors who had been martial champions and commended their spirits to defend House Blueblood forevermore. The animated robes of Mave the Marvelous whorled with dire spellcraft at her disposal, the nigh-indestructible barding of The Implacable Vambrace stood vigilant, and the roving swords of the Three Quiet Brothers slunk through the shadows.

Polaris was ready. He cast a ball of light to hover above the casting circle, knelt before the lily pool, and closed his eyes.

“On the spirits of my ancestors, I call my soul forth so that I might offer a portion and summon a mighty Servant.”

He opened his eyes. The lily had disappeared from the pool, leaving a strange, glassy surface in its place. Below the surface, a simulacrum of Polaris looked upwards, smiling at his true self. The image extended his hoof, raising it through the surface of the pool.

Polaris drew the Platinum Razor from its sheath, and sliced through the spectral limb with a single stroke.

He screamed, as much from shock and reflex as from pain. The ritual circle blazed with ultramarine light. His blond mane whipped around his face from the winds that now howled inside the chapel. The flames of the eight candles and the butter lamp doubled and then tripled in size before exploding in a shower of yellow light. A hole seemed to tear within reality itself, linked inextricably to Blueblood, pulling the very breath from his lungs.

In seconds, it was over.

The stone floor was warm beneath his belly. He opened his eyes, and closed them again. When they next opened, he was unsure how long he had lain in place. It took three attempts to climb to his hooves. He caught a glimpse of his face in the lily pool. His eyes were sunken and glassy, his mane seemed brittle and aged, and his limbs shook with exertion. He coughed, feeling tar stir deep within his lungs, and squealed from the pain that wracked his ribs.

The ritual would not permanently damage his soul, souls being marvellous things that regenerated quickly. But damaging a portion of his own soul was excruciating, and took a toll on the body that could kill a lesser stallion. His mind felt weak and clouded. All he wished to do was curl up beneath soft blankets until the pain went away.

A figure stood before him, though in his exhaustion he could not make out who it was. A white hoof proffered a bottle to his lips. Rarity, of course. She had come in now that the ritual was complete to aid him. He took the bottle and sucked the peppery liquid down greedily, feeling strength return to his limbs as it slid down his throat. He coughed again after draining the bottle, but this time there was no agony, and it actually seemed to dislodge the catarrh from inside him.

“Thank you, Rarity,” he croaked.

He heard a cheerful, almost musical laugh. “I think you’ve got the wrong mare, you have.”

Polaris looked up. Before him was a white-coated unicorn, a mare with green eyes and a curly, cherry-red mane that barely reached her neck. She wore a chainmail hauberk over quilting and a threadbare, well-weathered hooded travelling cloak.

He stared at her. He looked back at the ritual circle. It was empty. He looked back at the mare. “Who are you?”

The mare ignored him, instead picking up the Platinum Razor, which had fallen to the floor. Her eyes lit up with cheer as she surveyed it.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen this, it has.” Her accent was an odd one, a lilting, playful sound. The closest Blueblood could think of was a Caerfilly accent. “I knew cherrywood charcoal was the right thing for the forge. The enchantments are still as strong as when I first cast them.”

Something clicked within Polaris’ mind. “You’re Saber.”

The mare shrugged. “Apparently so. Grail War, Servants and Masters and all that lark, I’ve got all that rolling about up here now,” she said, tapping a hoof to her head. “You’d be my Master, then?”

Polaris blinked. “This is wrong,” he said. “The summoning was wrong. Who are you? I was trying to summon Prince Platinum III as my Servant!”

The mare goggled at him, and the burst out laughing. “What, wee ‘Poncey’ Platinum? Why were you trying to summon him?”

“He stopped the minotaur invasion! Ruled the greatest expansion of art and science in Equestrian antiquity! Owner of the Platinum Razor! He founded the Hornblade Knights!” sputtered Polaris.

The mare shrugged again. “Well, all that’s true but he was still a bit of a daft tit, I’ll say. Not the brightest lad, but knew well enough to stay surrounded by clever folk, eh?” she said. “Glad to hear his chivalry club took off nicely, the little moppet was so excited when he told me about starting it. Come to think of it, I did give him the Platinum Razor, after I didn’t need it any more. He must have been a score old, back then.”

Blueblood stared, and said nothing. Then he said, “Who are you?”

Instead of replying, she took the empty potion flask in her hooves. She rolled it from hoof to hoof, testing its weight, and tossed to Polaris.

“Catch,” she said.

Blueblood caught the flask in his magic field. Both halves of it. He looked closely. The flask had been bisected from neck to base with impossible precision, in a cut so smooth that it appeared to have always been thus.

The mare was holding the Platinum Razor, and smiling. He didn’t even see her draw it.

“Who am I? Oh, I’m just a simple lass from Ceffyl Dwr, I am,” said the mare. “You can call me Castellan.”

Gatecrasher

A strange chill rent the air in Berry’s Bar, and brought with it the scent of cinnamon, fresh carpet, and brake fluid. This was highly unusual. Berry’s Bar rarely smelled of anything but vomit, desperation, and potato vodka.

The bar was closed, its windows dark and shuttered, chairs stacked on tables and bottles locked away, the last of the clientele having left hours ago. A space had been cleared in the middle of the bar-room, tables shifted to make room for dribbly candles and ritual circle drawn in caster sugar. Two figures stood in the candlelit gloom.

The first was a young mare by the name of Pinkie Pie. She had a bubblegum-pink coat and a hot-pink mane that flopped frizzily down her neck and withers, reminiscent of a week-old helium balloon. Her cutie-mark was a cocktail glass filled with blue liquid and topped with a yellow umbrella. She was the lone barmare while Mr and Mrs Cake, the owners, travelled to Manehattan to carry out various items of illegitimate business on behalf of the Apple clan, and while Berry Punch, the renter, worked as a seasonal fermentation consultant at Sweet Apple Acres. Presently, Pinkie Pie peered at the other figure in the bar.

The second figure was far stranger. He was not a pony, certainly. He had a long, lithe and muscular body as if a serpent, the middle part coated in a lush brown coat, the tail red and scaled like a dragon’s with a fluffy pomf at the tip, and his upper body grey-furred and sleek. He had a dragon’s leg, a goat hoof, an eagle’s talon, and a lion’s paw, and no matter how Pinkie squinted in the dull light, she could never quite make out which limb was placed where. He bore a pair of wings, one pegasine and the other batesque. On his head were two eyes, yellow with red pupils, two horns, one of a deer the other of an antelope, and a muzzle that wasn’t quite equine.

Pinkie Pie’s brow furrowed. She tilted her head and blinked. “Huh,” she said, “you’re not cupcakes.”

The creature lifted his head to look at her. He replied with a deep voice as rich and strange as absinthe and truffle-shavings. “Are you sure? Appearances can be deceiving, after all. Can you really say I’m not cupcakes without having tasted me?” He grasped his lion arm with his eagle claw, pulled the limb free of its socket with a pop, and then ate the detached limb in two bites. He chewed it over for a moment, contemplating. From his empty socket, another lion’s paw grew out like a balloon inflating, until the limb was restored entirely. He shook his head. “No, it’s more like tofu. You’re right, I’m not cupcakes.”

Pinkie did not appear shocked or disturbed, but thoughtful. She then asked, “How did you get here? I mean, I’ve seen ponies come into this bar through the front door, through the back door, through the window, out the window if the bouncer is a grumpy-pants, but you came in through a cake tin.” She gestured at the tin in the center of the ritual circle, which the creature had his dragon leg stuck inside. “I’ve never seen anypony come in through a cake tin.”

“Well, I felt someone—or something, at least—inviting me to a party,” replied the beast. “Okay, perhaps not inviting me, per se. Perhaps even saying that I was decidedly not invited, and that the event to which I was expressly uninvited was at absolute maximum capacity, no entrance allowed. Perhaps they even posted several bouncers at the doors, which were closed and locked and deadbolted. But the party seemed so very interesting, so I simply made myself a door.”

“You’re not a door,” said Pinkie Pie.

The creature turned himself into a door. “I am so a door,” he said, opening and shutting as he spoke.

“You’re not a door, you’re ajar.”

“I’m not a jar, jars are for jam. There’s no jam here, ergo I’m not a jar.”

“There is so jam!”

“Rubbish! What jam?”

“Door jamb.”

“I believe you’re looking at the question through the wrong frame. Regardless, in response to your previous allegation, I am a door.”

“Hmmph,” said Pinkie Pie. “You weren’t a door...”

The creature shifted back to his original form and feigned innocence. “I might have been a door. Anyway, there was something about a once-a-century contest to change the course of reality itself... Have you heard anything about some Grail War?”

Pinkie Pie shook her head. “Nope. My dad was in a war once, I think. He came back without any legs,” she said. “I don’t really like wars. I was just trying to make cupcakes.”

“Yes, it didn’t really seem interesting enough to bother with.” The creature looked around at the ritual circle, noting candles, arcane runes, several sweet potatoes, and no sign of any conventional cupcake creation contraptions. “You were trying to make cupcakes, you say?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have an oven so I used candles instead.”

“I see. And the effigy made from sweet potatoes?”

“The recipe needed flour but we don’t have any flour. Mrs Cake says we haven’t had any flour since I was a little foal, and I was too small to make cupcakes then. We have lots of sweet potatoes, though! Ponyville is the sweet potato capital of Equestria!”

“...And the arcane ritual circle?”

“There’s no vanilla flavoring so I used that instead.”

The beast nodded respectfully. “A strange cupcake recipe indeed. Wherever did you find it, little one?”

Pinkie Pie picked up a thick tome and presented it to him. “Here!”

The creature looked at the book. “Granny Pie’s Grimoire of Eldritch Knowledge and Home Cooking...” He put a pawtip to the ritual circle, dabbed at the sugar, put the digit in his mouth and tasted it. “It tastes like sichuan pepper and chaos. Why, that’s my favorite! This is delightful magic indeed.”

“You can taste magic?”

“Why, I can taste, touch, smell, see and even hear magic! Mind you, I usually hear magic when it explodes, and at that stage I rarely advise touching or tasting it. I can smell magic all around us, for instance,” he slunk from the circle to a chair by the bar, “on this chair, a pony lost a bet last week!”

“That was Thunderlane! He bet he could drink twelve shots without being sick!”

The creature skittered around the room, sniffing until he found another spot. “Here, a pony lost three fights.”

“Yup! Carrot Top lost a fight with the bouncer, with gravity, and with her bladder all in one!”

“And on this table over here, a stallion fathered a child!” He sniffed again. “Actually, that might be my regular sense of smell...”

“Ooh! Ooh! Do me!”

The creature crawled up to Pinkie Pie and snuffled her. He snuffled her mane and said, “Your birthday is the third of May,” snuffled her snout and said, “You like parties and hot sauce and sweet things and jokes,” snuffled her withers and said, “You dislike greyness and boredom and broken promises,” snuffled her cutie mark and said, “Your name is Pinkie Pie, and you smell strongly indeed of magic,” snuffled her right forehoof until a curious look came over his face and continued to snuffle until he had almost snorted the hoof inside his nostril. He sneezed the hoof out, grasped it, and looked at the dark-red sigils drawn across it.

“Magic letters!” he exclaimed. “Magic letters written on your hoof!”

She looked down at them. “Weird. They weren’t there this morning.”

“Pinkie Pie, I recognise these sigils! This means something!”

“What?” she said, wide-eyed. “What does it mean?”

“It means we’re supposed to be friends!”

Pinkie Pie gasped. “Gasp! This is brilliant! I love friends!”

“We can do stuff together!”

Her eyes lit up. “Do you know how to make cupcakes?”

He leaned back, a smug grin on his face. “Do I know how to make cupcakes? Why yes, I do,” he said. “But why would I make a cupcake? There’s a perfectly good cupcake right in your mane yoink!” His lion’s paw shot out and sunk into Pinkie’s ruffle of hair. He pulled back out just as quickly, bearing a cupcake with bright pink frosting.

Pinkie Pie stared at it, her jaw hanging open. “A real cupcake...”

The beast presented it. “Go ahead. It’s yours.”

She took the cupcake. She sniffed at it, first tentatively and then deeply, sighing with pleasure. She licked it, then nibbled it, and then gobbled the entire thing down in a frenzy of bites, moaning softly as she did so.

“Mmfff...” Little flecks of crumb and icing fell from her lips. “Icing so sweet... such fluffy cake, the vanilla, the faintest hint of pomegranate and citrus, it’s all so overwhelming, it’s so...” She swallowed, slumped, and sobbed, tears falling from her eyes.

The creature curled in close. “Why do you cry, Pinkie Pie?”

“I cry,” said Pinkie, “for I know that I shall never taste another thing so good as long as I live.”

“Is that so?” The creature snapped his claws, and a second cupcake appeared.

Pinkie looked at the cupcake. She looked to the creature, then back to the cupcake, then back to the creature. The creature nodded. She took the cupcake.

This one she ate slowly. She nibbled at the edges. She turned it over and bit the base, savoring the contrast between the outer crust and the inner cake. She sunk her teeth into the thick, zesty icing, letting it coat her tongue and the roof of her mouth. She even chewed slowly, determined to make this morsel last as long as mortally possible.

After swallowing the last mouthful, she looked up at the creature. She was panting, her face flushed, her eyes unfocused and filled with need. The creature smiled, and conjured a pint of milk and a box of miniature cupcakes.

Pinkie Pie looked at him in awe. “You are so cool.”

“I’ve often said so myself.”

“We need to throw a party,” she said. “A ‘Pinkie Pie’s Awesome Friend Is Awesome’ party.”

“Ponies still have parties?” asked the beast, his eyebrows raised. “Why yes, we should have a party. With punch, and music, and artillery!”

“And after the party, we can do even more stuff! Or before the party! Or even during the party!”

“Oho, like what?”

“Like, um, snowmobile racing! Bake-offs! Ghost-baiting!”

“Yes indeed! We’ll do all that and more, why, there’s so many things I’d like to do here. Whisky benders, mass weddings, vandalism!”

“Reverse streaking, prank-o-thons and grand-theft-zeppelin!”

“Competitive hugging! Sardine riding!”

“Paint huffing! Flash orgies!”

“A lynching but with candy instead of criminals!”

“That’s called a pinata!”

“I’ll have three!”

The pair of them were practically dancing around the room, both vibrating with excitement. The beast said, “Tell me, little one, where is this place exactly?”

“We’re in Berry’s Bar, in Ponyville, in Equestria.”

“Equestria! Ah, I thought I smelled its dulcet pong! It’s been so long since I’ve seen this place. You must give me a tour.”

Pinkie Pie bounced on her hooves. “I’d love to! Oh mare, we’ve sure got a lot of stuff to do. I kinda wanna do everything first, y’know? Should we make a list?”

The creature laughed gently. “Oh ho ho, no Pinkie, lists are for squares! I’ve got something better than a list. I’ve got a chariot!”

He snapped his fingers, and in the space of the bar a thing appeared which could loosely be termed a ‘chariot.’ A golden carriage floated a foot off the ground, with two golden doors shaped like apples and a soft top of gold lamé. Reins led from the carriage to a pair of creatures identical to the one in front of Pinkie. Both of these creatures were themselves attached to two more identical creatures, half the size of the originals. These smaller creatures were each led by another, smaller pair, which were led by another smaller pair, until the creatures at the very front of the reins were almost too small to see.

“Nice chariot! It looks like magic.”

The creature nodded. “In a manner of speaking. Have you ever heard of Tortuga’s paradox?”

“Hmmm. Is that the one where you run towards a thing, get halfway there in ten seconds, then halfway again in five, then halfway again in two and a half but you never reach the end because math?”

“That’s roughly it, yes. You can never move anywhere in this paradox because there will always be a smaller possible movement that you haven’t yet made. My chariot solves this by taking an infinite number of ever-tinier steps.”

“Huh, that’s pretty smart.” The door to the carriage swung open, and Pinkie Pie hopped inside to land on a beanbag. The beast followed her inside and took the reins. “Say, you know my name but I don’t know yours. What should I call you?”

“My name?” The beast grinned, and giggled. “I have had many names, little one. I have been called Havoc, The Dragon In The Stone, Eris, Discord, The Ever-Changing One, Mayhem, Ahriman, Uridimmu, Strife, Neheb Ka” —he spoke faster, his voice trilling with excitement— “Ladon, The August Star of Heaven, Chuckles the Dancing Revenant, Apophis, The Font of Strange and Exciting Events...” He paused and giggled once more. Pinkie looked at him expectantly. He looked back at her.

“But for some reason,” he continued, “none of those names feel like my name. For some reason, I feel like my name is... Rider.”

Boot

Cold water became Apple Bloom’s world, her sister’s hooves the chains that bound her to it. It filled her mouth and nose and ears, soaked every hair and pore, immersed her every sense. Her lungs tickled. Soon, they would be screaming.

Each breathless second grew more painful, in the way that nervous laughter turns into hysterics. A minute in, her neck jerked against her sister’s hooves, desperate and unthinking. Apple Bloom could no more stop the panic than she could grow gills and breathe. A minute was not enough. She would drown here.

The water grew colder as her lungs burned.

Time was lost as her lungs caved in, the last barren bubbles escaping her lips and creeping up to the surface. Water clawed at the back of her mouth, and her lungs begged to let it in. She did not know how much water she swallowed to avert the reflex to breathe. She knew her hind legs had collapsed now. It did not matter. Her sister held her steady.

Her limbs flailed as she inhaled water, each trying to escape in a different direction. Blackness crept into the edge of her vision as white flashed in the middle, and the pounding in her head grew louder than the screaming in her lungs.

Only as her head fell upwards did she realise that her sister had released her. It took more than will to brace her own forelegs and push her own head back under the water, it took every ounce of spite and anger in her body working as one. Apple Bloom could not hear her sister’s warnings, but she felt them on her body, tapping and pulling. It did not matter. She would drown first.

A click, and the world drained away.

* * *

The blackness receded, and Apple Bloom was already upright. Water spewed from her lips. She could not tell if she had vomited, or merely exhaled. Her whole body felt wet, and she saw water on the floor. The latch on the training bath had been pulled, instantly—but messily—draining all its contents. Through bloodshot eyes, she saw her sister.

“How many hooves am I holding up?” asked Applejack.

Apple Bloom coughed and tried to focus. “...One?”

“Good. Two-hundred push-ups, git!”

The filly flailed her arms and tried to regain her bearings. “Guh—gimme a—”

Applejack knocked her down with a headbutt. “The Giving Tree will give you many things, but it will not give you a moment!” she screamed.

Apple Bloom snarled and swung a hoof at her sister. Applejack sidestepped neatly, grabbed her sister bodily, and hauled her against a wooden crate. She picked up her sister’s tail and lifted her upwards so that her hind legs rested on the crate. Apple Bloom coughed, but did not fall.

“Get going, you can wring your lungs out later.”

Apple Bloom grunted and began to hammer out raised push-ups. The first two were shaky, but by the fifth she was hammering out one each second. Water ran from her nose and mouth. Her coughing and retching did not slow her down.

Her sister strutted around her with a walking cane, the strap wrapped around her hoof. “You are not good enough for the Tree. It’s gonna suck you dry and spit out a husk.”

Apple Bloom ignored her. She muttered softly as she reached fifty.

“A wimp like you will die in the Tree. If you give up, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll die tired.”

Her push-ups did not slow, but her rump began to creep up, taking the strain off her stomach. Applejack smacked her in the ribs with the walking cane.

“Keep your form straight or I’ll beat you black and blue!”

Applejack continued to mock her until she reached one-hundred-and-fifty. She slapped her sister in the face. She wobbled, but shifted her weight and continued.

“You’re already a failure,” growled Applejack. “You’ve been a failure since you were born. You were a failure when I left, a failure when our parents died, and a failure when I returned. This is your last week on the planet, and you will spend it being a disappointment to everyone who ever knew you. If you marched on out to the barn right now and opened up your legs with a sickle, we’d thank you for freeing up our schedules.”

Apple Bloom’s face twisted in a sneer, but she soldiered on. Even in the chilly basement, she was lathered with sweat. She lifted her neck, briefly looked at her sister, and spat on the ground.

She reached one-hundred-and-ninety. With a snarl, Applejack placed a hoof between Apple Bloom’s withers and bore her weight downwards. As the filly’s chest was pressed onto the floor, Applejack whispered into her ear, “You do not deserve the gifts of the Tree.”

Apple Bloom screamed in anger and strained with all her might. Her jaw clenched until her teeth creaked, her tendons bulged and her joints twisted, muscles she could not even name quivered as she fought her sister. The anger turned to pain as a joint popped, but she did not let up. If not for her sister’s alchemical poultices, the strain would have crippled her.

Applejack lifted her hoof. Sobbing, Apple Bloom did ten more push-ups on a leg full of sprained ligaments.

* * *

Applejack returned soon after with a medical bag. She hauled her sister to a sitting position and pushed a dried coil of alastor root into her mouth. It stunk of turpentine and tasted of sour milk, but Apple Bloom pushed it against her gums until she felt its effects. The narcotic root did not dull the pain any, and every nerve in her body was as raw as ever, but the pain no longer seemed important.

She watched as her sister slathered a white paste on her swollen elbows, and then bound them with paper-brown bandages. She sighed at the sensation, this at least was soothing. Her sister blew on each binding, and she felt runes prickle into her skin.

“That’ll speed up the healing,” said Applejack. “Your legs will be right as rain in an hour, but you’ll feel like you haven’t slept in two days.”

Apple Bloom grunted. “I haven’t slept in three days.”

Her sister laughed. “Good, you’re well on your way!” She took a small wooden stick from her pack, held it between her teeth and tongue, and pressed it against Apple Bloom’s neck. She stayed there for a minute, counting the beats under her breath. “Pulse seems stable enough. Now, have you felt a squeezing sensation in your chest and jaw?”

“No.”

“Have you felt like your heart has skipped a beat?”

“No.”

Applejack lifted her chin and stared her in the eye. “Now Apple Bloom, I get hiding symptoms and playing tough, and normally I’d be right with you and say stop whinin’ and get back to work, but in this case I need to know.”

Apple Bloom stared ahead blankly, and giggled. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I ache all over. Is that allowed, Doc?”

Applejack patted her sister on the back. “It means you’re on course and I’m darned proud of you.”

She took out a bowl and began to feed her little sister. Mashed sweet potato, with vegetable shortening and cubes of apple. The filly wolfed it down.

“Who the hay came up with the idea of stickin’ lard in rations,” groused Apple Bloom. “It tastes plain disgustin’,” she said, as she munched down another spoonful. “But I can’t stop eatin’ it.”

Applejack grinned sheepishly. “It ain’t an Equestrian recipe. I learned it on the trail from an old friend of mine.”

“I hate it but I can’t stop.” Apple Bloomed looked up at her sister.

“You’re eating enough for three grown stallions,” said Applejack. “Between training all day and not sleeping, you’re still gonna lose weight.”

After the bowl was empty, Applejack packed away the bag. “You stay put. I’m gonna go fetch the keep-in-memory game, that’ll keep you awake until your legs heal up.” She walked over to Apple Bloom, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’m real proud of you, sis,” she said, her eyes shimmering in the dull light of the basement. “You’re gonna be the best dang mage this family has ever seen, I know it.”

As she turned to leave, her sister called out to her.

“What’s up, sis?”

Apple Bloom wore a forced grin, and couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. “It’s—nah, forget I said anything.”

“Aw, don’t do that. Tell me what’s up.”

The filly cringed. “I... I don’t think I can do it, sis. I don’t see how I can do it.”

Applejack rested a hoof on the filly’s shoulder. “Bloom, what are you talkin’ about? You’re doing great.”

She looked up at her with red eyes. “But it don’t matter, does it? Sis, you’ve always been stronger and tougher than me. Granny Smith says you had to stop half-way through, you had to run away. If you couldn’t do it even after all this training, what chance have I got?”

Applejack stared at her sister for a moment. She burst out laughing, and didn’t stop until her hat fell from her head. “Shucks, that’s what’s got you all knotted up? I forget how young you are sometimes, Bloom.”

The filly glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I didn’t get no trainin’, sis,” said Applejack, her grin lopsided. “I didn’t even know what the Giving Tree was until a few seconds after grammaw threw me inside.”

Apple Bloom’s jaw dropped. She stared at her sister in silence. Applejack just laughed. “Sit tight, sis. I’ll be back with the game.”

Applejack soon returned with the box. She faced away from her sister as she set up the game, selecting trinkets for the tray. It took a moment to realise that Apple Bloom had called her name.

“Sis?” She glanced over her shoulder. Apple Bloom’s eyes were glazed from tiredness, but there was an air of contemplativeness about her.

“Can you tell me more about the Giving Tree?” said the filly. “All Granny said is that it hurts and it gives you magic.”

Applejack chuckled softly. “Yeah, that’s about the long and short of it.” She paused, trying to choose the best way to explain such a thing. “You know what dryads are, right?”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Yeah, Tree Whisperers, from the fairy tales. Tree spirits.”

“That’s right. Well, a will-o-wisp wanders the forest until it finds a perfect seed. When it does, it pours itself inside and binds itself to the tree. The tree grows, and inside it, the wisp changes into a dryad, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. When the dryad is full-grown she can leave her tree and wander the forest, but she’s still bound to the tree. If one dies, so does the other.

“Now, the Giving Tree was changed by magic, hundreds of years ago. It sucks up will-o-wisps into its fruit, but the fruit never falls. There’s no wood inside its branches, just thick bark wrapped around itself. When they put you into the Giving Tree, the bark closes up around you. Your lungs fill with sap, the roots burrow into your skin, and one of the will-o-wisps falls down into your heart, like a bug slipping down a pitcher plant. Instead of growing inside the tree, the dryad grows inside you. You become two minds in one body. The dryad gains the strength of a pony, and you gain the spells of the dryad.” She added, “That is, after you get used to living with two sets of thoughts in your head.”

Apple Bloom mulled this over. “So how come it hurts?”

“You can breathe the sap, but your brain don’t know it,” said Applejack. “That’s one reason. Also, the roots burrow into your skin everywhere, and I mean everywhere, closer to the date we’ll give you some numbing creams for that. Also, also, sharing your brain for the first time is... uncomfortable.”

“I getcha.” Apple Bloom stared forward for a minute. “So... I’ll be half-dryad?”

“Yup, and the dryad will be half-pony.”

“You said I’ll share thoughts with her,” said Apple Bloom, slowly. “Doesn’t that mean I’ll basically be a different pony when I come out? I mean, if half of my thoughts are hers...”

“Most ponies become different ponies over their lives, that’s what happens when you grow up.”

Apple Bloom nodded, but said nothing.

“Darlin’, you’ll still be you, just this time with a... well, think of it as a cross between a bunkmate and a little sister.”

“Oh, okay.” She looked up at her sister, a thoughtful smile on her lips. “What’s your dryad like?”

Applejack coughed. “...I don’t lie unless it’s important, and I don’t lie to family ‘less it’s even more important. I won’t lie to you, Apple Bloom, and if you ask again I will tell you. But I’d rather not talk about her, for reasons that are my own. It’s your choice, and you have every right to know, but as your sister I’d be darned grateful if you didn’t ask me,” she said, imploringly.

Apple Bloom opened her mouth as if to say something, and slowly closed it. She smiled. “Nah sis, it’s okay, I understand. I think.”

Applejack put a hoof on her shoulder. “Thanks, Bloom. Anyway, let’s play this game before your elbows heal up.”

She placed the cloth-covered tray in front of Apple Bloom, removed the covering, and counted down from ten as her sister studied the assorted miscellanea. When she finished her count, she covered the tray once more. Bleary-eyed and halting, Apple Bloom recited all the objects she could remember. Scissors, quartz, half-a-dozen appleseeds, red string, green string, a brass bracelet, a clear glass bead, a dried potato, a bottle cap. The tray was uncovered again; she had missed about half. She growled in frustration.

“Don’t worry none,” said Applejack, “you scored darn good for a filly on no sleep. How are your elbows feeling?”

Apple Bloom gave her forelegs a jiggle. She winced. “Better, I guess.”

They played several more rounds of the game. Apple Bloom’s score improved with each go, but she never remembered more than two-thirds of the items.

“Sis, what’s all the training about? I mean, like, specifically,” she asked. “I get tryin’ to make me stronger and smarter for when I’m using magic, but how come I’m staying awake for days on end? What’s with all the pain testing? It’s important, so I don’t got a problem with it, I just... I don’t really get why I’m doing it all.”

Applejack nodded. “No reason to keep you in the dark about it, I’ll explain: you’re learning to take pain so that you don’t flail and panic and hurt the both of you when you’re in the tree. You’re training to focus so that you can get used to having two minds. You’re training physical endurance with all this exercise, and mental endurance from staying awake and listening to me barking at you, and that’s all so you can recover faster and there’s less risks. If you’re not trained properly you might injure yourself in the tree, or freak out so much from the disorientation that you get panic attacks for a decade, or burst out of the tree half-way through and end up wandering over Equestria with a broken mind for months--that one’s what I did, and I don’t recommend it.”

“No breaking my mind,” mouthed Apple Bloom. “Got it, sis.”

“Good. Oh, and--now this is a thing we’ll talk about closer to the date, but the way I see, it’s important enough to say again--when you’re in the tree, you might feel like the dryad is taking over. Like, she’s pushing into your mind, stealing your brain and erasing who you are. It’s an illusion! The dryad, she’ll be feeling the exact same thing, and no matter how close y’all get either way, you’re chasing the horizon. Run towards it all you want, it’ll always shrink away. Don’t fight the feeling, just do your best to relax. If you try to fight, you’ll give the dryad the jitters, she’ll try to fight, and you’ll both have a worse time of it.”

Apple Bloom nodded again. “I get you.” Her eyes wandered, and her smile cracked into a grin. She let out a giggle, which turned into a full laugh, and only grew more hysterical as she tried to stifle it.

“You alright there, Bloom?”

She nodded, and wiped a tear out of her eye--her forelegs now healed completely. “Sis, this is gonna suck, aint it?”

Applejack laughed. “Oh, it’s gon’ be the most painful experience of your life so far, by far.” She placed both of her forehooves on her sister’s shoulders. “But you’re gonna do us all proud, sis. There’s nothing in this world I’m more sure of.”

The Peer, The Prodigy, The Prodigal Daughter.

Three years ago...

Canterlot was fading.

Any fool could see it, thought Polaris Blueblood. He could see it especially well on this cold spring morning. He gazed out of the window at the city. The buildings at the edge were bleached and crumbling. Shanties and crude huts spread across half-built highways. Ponies shuffled through the drizzle to earn their rations in the Merchant Quarter, or the sooty Industrial District, or as servants in the Enclaves or the Canterlot Academy. It seemed as if the entire city were waking from hibernation, slowly coming alive for the summer forage and autumn harvests. There would be a brief roar of commerce and activity, trains of crops in and goods out, even a festival on good years, and then the city would sleep for the winter once more. The whole city would burrow and shiver, the unluckiest ponies would die of hunger or cold or the cruce or any of a hundred other privations, and Canterlot would grow in dark and terror until the next spring came.

Blueblood had seen thirty-one springs in his lifetime, and they told a depressing story. Each spring, another construction project was abandoned, another broken water main was left in disrepair, another highway collapsed. Ponies trudged to work slower and fewer. A few more dying suburbs disappeared, and tent cities welled up in their place. There were less crop wagons and more guards per wagon. Three festivals a year dropped to one festival a year to a festival every other year. Each winter, the city fell apart, and each spring, they fixed a little less.

Blueblood glanced at the dark-red markings on his left front-hoof, and chuckled mirthlessly. Of all the fools in Canterlot, fate had picked him as its savior.

He backed away from the window with a sigh, and paced the room. He ran a hooftip idly across the study’s many shelves and cabinets. The contents of this room, of all of Bluestone Manor, seemed to be a metaphor for Canterlot. Old, unimportant trophies gathered dust, next to empty spots where the valuable ones had been pawned or won away. Portraits and paintings had been auctioned off and replaced with prints, sometimes not replaced at all, leaving oddly blank spots on the wall. Treasures replaced with trinkets, first editions replaced with paperbacks, the few artifacts that had no commercial value drawing the eyes in a weighty, depressing way, a sad reminder of bygone eras and past glories.

It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t like this even when Polaris was in his teenage years. That was proof of how much his family’s fortunes had faded. There was perhaps one generation of Bluebloods left before the estate was drawn up between greater families, its assets sold off, its magics siphoned away.

Or at least, until last Thursday happened.

There was a delicate knock at the door.

“Come in, Rarity,” said Polaris.

A white unicorn with a lush, purple mane walked into the room. “Duke Blueblood,” she said, bowing, “you requested my presence?”

Polaris smiled. “Yes, I did. Please, take a seat.” He gestured to an armchair that was once a luxurious antique and was now simply an antique. His horn lit up, and he telekinetically closed the door to the room, opened the drinks cabinet, and poured two gin and tonics before setting the drinks down. Such a display of telekinetic strength would make most unicorns faint from exertion, and the ice he conjured would be a laughable impossibility too.

Both unicorns cradled the glasses between their hooves and sipped. It would have been exhausting for Rarity to hold it with telekinesis, and crass for Polaris to do so when his companion could not.

Rarity caught a glimpse of something on Polaris’ left hoof, and her eyes lit up. “Is that...”

“Yes,” said Blueblood, “it’s a Command Spell.” He extended his fore and rolled his fetlock, allowing Rarity to get a good view of the blood-red glyph. “It appeared four days ago. Rather odd-looking thing isn’t it? It reminds me of the mage-runes that earth pony magicians tattoo onto their skin.”

Rarity gasped softly. “It’s true, then? Another... ‘Grail War’ is taking place, and...”

“And I’m taking part, yes.” The smile on Polaris’ face faded. “That’s actually why I called you here today.”

“Oh?”

Polaris sighed. “You need to leave. I’m paying you severance, plus relocation costs, plus a bonus for excellent work. There are several possible places you and your family could go, as long as they are away from Canterlot. When it becomes known that I am in the Grail War, you will not be safe as long as you are by my side. My opponents will go after you and your family all to get to me. When... If I survive, I will gladly take you back into my employ.”

Rarity burst out laughing. “S-sir, I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible idea. I’m staying.”

“You’re bloody well not!”

“Oh, really?” Rarity smirked over her glass. “Who will bring you the gossip from the serving halls at the Canterlot Academy? Who will bring you news from butlers of the nobles in the Enclaves that you fell out with? In fact, who can verify that the information Fancy Pants is feeding you is correct? He will be the one adjudicating this whole thing, no?”

“How did you know that?” asked Blueblood, sharply.

“He works with gossips, and I’m an excellent listener. But that’s quite beside the point. At least one of the other players—oh, Masters, whatever—will come from the highest echelons of the Canterlot Academy. The rest are up in the air, and the sooner you know who they are, the better your chances will be.”

“...I confess you would be valuable, but I cannot allow—”

“Sir, what are your alternatives? Even with all the artifacts of your ancestors at your hooves, you will need to spend the next three years sharpening your magical and physical skills to their very peak. If you try to take over all of your intelligence gathering, research, and administrative work yourself, you will cripple your chances in the battle. If you hire somepony to replace me, you are simply sacrificing an innocent life to save mine. Not to mention, you have no guarantee that you could trust any hire you make from now on. Your secrecy won’t last long at all among those that matter in this regard, let alone once you start sending trusted companions to safety.”

Blueblood glared at her, before his expression fell away into one of guilt. “Rarity, we... even as a lowborn secretary, you have been a greater friend to this family than half of our noble allies in the Enclaves. My life would have been far less happy without your presence, and I... the Bluebloods are a dying family. This Grail War may be our last breath. If I win, we could save Canterlot, or at least slow its death for another few generations. If I lose... It would wound me to see you brought down alongside us, when you deserve so much more.”

“Oh, my duke,” whispered Rarity. She walked over to him, and placed a hoof on his cheek. “Because of your generosity, my family are no longer a meal away from poverty. My younger sister can go to school. My parents will not freeze in their old age. You may have your rough edges, but of all the ponies in Canterlot who call themselves the nobility, you are the only one with a true noble spirit. I would follow you to the gates of Tartarus if you asked, because if you asked, I know it would be the right thing to do.”

Conflicting emotions played out on Blueblood’s face. A tiny smile finally won out. “Very well, then,” he said, softly. “I accept your request. Truthfully, it would not have been the same without you, Rarity.”

Rarity bowed, and came up wearing a smile. “For the good of the House Blueblood, then?”

Duke Blueblood nodded. “For the good of Canterlot.”

* * *

Down a windy path near the raggedy end of the Canterlot Academy campus, where the fields and outbuildings sunk into the woody, weedy scrubland of the Canterhorn foothills, lay a pond and a bench. The pond was frozen over, a fine dusting of snow on an inch of ice, thick with white-whipped reeds, bull-rushes sticking out of the ice at odd angles, and duck nests long since abandoned for warmer climes.

On the bench sat two unicorns: a white-coated stallion with bags under his eyes and a rakish blue mane, and a yellow mare with a fiery mane. The male wore the winter uniform of the Royal Guard, a thick wool trenchcoat over a reinforced breastplate, as well as a fur-lined officer's cap, while the mare wore the traditional winter robes of the academy professoriat.

The mare said, “When is your sister meeting us?”

The stallion looked at a battered pocketwatch and replied, “I told her to meet us here at noon, so uh, fifteen seconds.”

A wry smile crept across the mare’s face. “That’s not the Twilight I remember. She’d turn up twenty minutes early to everything, muzzle-deep in two books at once.”

“Heh, ain’t that the truth. I think the EIS shook some of those habits loose. Now she’s switched from scary-early to crazy-punctual.”

With no flash or fanfare, a purple unicorn appeared on the bench next to them. Her navy-blue mane was trimmed into a sharp, straight fringe, well above her hard, deep-purple eyes. She wore a black cassock, the garments of a Seer Council warlock, but had Royal Guard rank insignia stitched onto the right shoulder. The insignia marked her as a warrant officer and spellcasting specialist. She wore an ivory clerical collar, and when the icy wind blew across it, tiny white runes were almost visible. She seemed entirely unbothered by the cold.

The stallion looked at his watch. “Two seconds past noon, Twiley,” he said with a grin. “You’re slipping.”

“I was checking the perimeter for any interlopers or conjurations, sir. Your team of bodyguards are fifty meters closer than you assigned them, but aside from that, we are clear.” Her voice was flat and curt, as if conversation itself was a distasteful thing that, if not avoided, should at least be dispensed with quickly. Her eyebrows perked up, and she said, “Captain Shining Armor. Professor Sunset Shimmer. It’s good to see you both.”

“You can relax, Twilight,” said Sunset. “We’re not expecting to be swarmed by enemies just yet.”

“Doesn’t hurt to check,” said Twilight.

“You can drop the ‘sir’ this and ‘captain’ that too, Twiley,” said Shining Armor.

Twilight did not sigh, but her entire face conveyed a sigh so well that the actual action was superfluous. “I know you are my brother, but improper forms of address are still a breach of Royal Guard protocol—”

“You can drop it because you’re no longer an active member of the Royal Guard.”

“What!”

“You’re on administrative leave effective immediately, and then you’re leaving the force on a medical discharge at the end of the month.”

Twilight’s face jerked back as if slapped, but her normal expression quickly returned. “...I see.”

Shining Armor leaned back on the bench and kneaded his chin with a hoof, trying to figure out the best way to breach a tricky subject. “We’re putting you on a special assignment. It’ll be the most important assignment of your life. Your role will be separate from the Royal Guard’s role, and more important too. We are now part of something far bigger than Royal Guard business.”

Twilight looked at the other two unicorns askance. “So, when you say ‘we...’”

Sunset Shimmer stood up, walked to the edge of the icy pond, and turned to look back at her. “Twilight, what do you know about the Grail Wars?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then replied: “A... ‘contest’ between powerful magical families. Five factions each time. It occurs approximately once per century, involves heavy use of magic and lethal force, and there is a powerful magical prize.”

Sunset’s eyebrows shot up, and then she burst out laughing. “I’d forgotten how sharp you were! You know, you’re not supposed to know a single word of what you just told me?”

“Of course.”

“How did you find out, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Twilight said, “Hmm. The Grail War is heavily censored, in fact I only ever saw off-hoof references in unrelated texts, or books sufficiently well-guarded to avoid the censor’s eye. But, there are patterns. It has affected enough events that its censoring leaves a shadow, a shadow deep enough to show events blacked out of history books and periodicals roughly every hundred years. It leaves a ripple, and you can see that in other places... marriage announcements between noble families, financial market performance, actuarial archives, all sorts of places. You can tell which regions didn’t take part, which families died out or were absorbed into others shortly after, and importantly, which families and associated factions suddenly gained unprecedented thaumaturgical capabilities. Also, references to the Grail War are a category three subversion within the Seer Council, along with a thousand other things. Council decree is to destroy any category three subversions, but not to interrogate and purify connected individuals. This implies that it is a well-known secret among noble magical houses.”

Sunset Shimmer beamed at her. “That’s excellent. I’ll fill in the gaps for you: the Grail is a powerful magical artifact, several millennia old, that allows the construction and execution of limited wishes. It chooses five powerful spellcasters to channel its energies correctly, but will only grant a single wish. The five spellcasters—the Masters—must compete, and the Grail summons Servants to do battle as proxies for the mages. There are five categories of servant: Archer, Saber, Caster, Lancer, and Assassin. Each Servant is a powerful hero, drawing off the life-force of their Master to materialize and act. Opponents are defeated through the death or complete capitulation of Master and Servant.

“The next Grail War will begin in three years time. Fancy Pants, the Chancellor of the Treasury, will be overseeing it—he will ensure that the rules are adhered to, that the secrecy of the Grail War is preserved, and arrange safe havens for defeated Masters. As a captain of the Royal Guard, Shining Armor has two roles: he will act as an enforcer for Fancy Pants to maintain neutrality, and he will keep the civilian population away from the worst of the violence,” said Sunset. “And naturally, I will be one of the Masters.”

“I see,” said Twilight. “I assume I will be working with Sunset from now on?”

“Kinda,” said Shining Armor. “You’re going to be allies.”

“Allies? You mean—”

Sunset nodded. “You will also be a Master. You’re right-hoofed, aren’t you? Show me your right hoof.”

Twilight sat up straight on the bench, and presented her hoof. A dark-red sigil wove around it. Sunset Shimmer pulled her own sleeve back to reveal a similar sigil.

Shining Armor stood up, and put a hoof on Twilight’s withers. “See, the Canterlot Academy and Sunset Shimmer are, for lack of a better word, trustworthy. The noble houses in the Enclaves are too petty and vengeful to be trusted with something like the Grail, House Blueblood are barely strong enough to field a Master let alone defeat four others, and the less said about those outside of Canterlot, the better.”

“Yes,” said Sunset Shimmer, “normally I would not work alongside another Master, and normally I would represent my family, House Sunblaze, not the Canterlot Academy. Normally, your brother wouldn’t lower himself to join the internecine squabbles of the magical houses, and normally an archmage like myself would not lower myself to ask for his help. But this time, things are different. After decades—centuries—of research, we almost have a true outlet for the Grail’s power.”

“Oh?”

“We’re going to bring back the Royal Pony Sisters.”

* * *

Applejack had not seen this room in a very long time. The rug, the roaring fireplace, the warped oak floorboards, framed photographs on the mantelpiece that were black mirrors in the night’s dark, they were all still here. Still too lingered the smell of dog hair and cinnamon and antiseptic. And beside the fireplace, the old mare sitting in her rocking chair as if she was built into it, or perhaps if it was built over her, a mere extension of her will. The mare looked no older than the last time Applejack had seen her, and Applejack knew she would be no less dangerous. She steeled herself for what she was about to do.

As Applejack’s hoof touched the floorboards, a creak sounded out. The old mare jolted in her chair as if the room itself was wired into her nervous system. Her beady, golden eyes cracked open, and she looked at the interloper.

“Well, lookie-here, the prodigal daughter done returned,” rasped the old mare. “Now, maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember you saying that iffin’ you ever came back here, you’d be putting me in the ground...”

With those words, a hundred circles and wards glowed around the room. The wooden floorboards warped and seemed to take root within one another, the lights drained off into strange will-o-wisps, and the room crackled with power, all centered around the ancient mare in her rocking chair.

The whole power of the Apple clan—nay, the whole power of Ponyville and beyond—rose up and splayed out, eager to obey the old mare’s every command. There were no old smells of home now, the room crackled with ozone and the damp reek of earth magic. The weight of the magic was such that careful spellcasting was unnecessary; the old mare could likely crush a pony’s skull with a thought.

Applejack just rolled her eyes. “Grammaw, that was when I was ten. And I came back when I was eleven, for the Summer Sun Celebration with auntie and uncle, and nopony killed anypony.”

The magic in the room faded away, as if embarrassed, but the old mare glared at her. “Don’t you go callin’ me grammaw like yer’ still on the teat! Yer’ in my dang house, so give me some respect.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”

“An’ don’t give me none of that fancy Manehattan speechifying neither, y’hear? Talk like you was raised.”

Applejack sighed loudly. “Yes’m, Granny Smith.”

“Good! Now, s’matter fact I do remember you changin’ yer mind on the whole subject of killin’ me. I also remember that a year or two after that, you stopped learning the family magic so you could go gallavantin’ off with that furrin’ hussy, tryin’ to ‘find out the secrets of the earth’ or somesuch nonsense. Well? Y’all find something?”

“I know about the land now, Granny. I understand how to save it.”

Granny Smith scowled at her grandchild. “Well shoot, I could’ve tole you that! I tole you that when yer’d barely been hunting bounties a year. That was a dozen-odd years ago!”

“But I had to understand, Granny,” said Applejack, exasperatedly. “If I don’t understand it, the magic won’t work right!”

Granny Smith huffed and shook her head. “It warms my heart to hear that some of my wisdom will soak through yer thick skull, if the whole dang world conspires to beat you over the head with it for a decade. Now, I am going to assume that you did not trek all the way back to Ponyville just to tell your dear ole’ grammaw that she was right all along. You done found something else.”

“Yes’m, in a manner of speakin’.” Applejack smiled wryly, walked over to her grandmother, and presented her right forehoof. The moment Granny Smith’s eyes caught hint of the blood-red sigil, she grabbed that hoof between both of hers and turned it over, scrutinizing it carefully.

Both ponies were silent for several moments.

Granny Smith whooped and cackled and leaned back in her chair, legs kicking in the air. “Well I’ll be! A gen-u-ine, honest-to-dirt Command Spell. I didn’t know you had it in you, Applejack, in fact, I was a week away from cutting my losses and sticking lil’ Apple Bloom in the Giving Tree.”

Applejack just nodded, her smile going nowhere. The elder mare seemed annoyed by the lack of a reaction.

“Did y’all not just hear what I said? I said I was a week away from sticking Apple Bloom in the Giving Tree.”

“I heard jes’ fine, Granny. Do it anyway.”

Granny Smith’s eyebrows shot up. Her ghostly eyes seemed to glow a little darker, and she either laughed or coughed. “You want me to put Apple Bloom in the Tree? You want that? Did you just plum forget what the Tree is like?”

“No’m.”

“I remember exactly how much you screamed and cried when the bark first closed over your skin. You squealed like a stuck pig when the tendrils stripped your flesh and dug into your eyes, and even when the tree filled your lungs with sap you shook like you were tryin’ to knock the dang thing down. I don’t recall a day I walked past the Tree when you weren't sobbin’ away like a newborn inside it.”

“Yes’m.”

“An’ even when it was done, even after it gave you the wonderful gift of magic, you said my name like a cuss and ran away for years. You couldn’t handle the Tree for a month, and now you think yer lil’ sis should do it properly?”

Applejack snorted. “The Giving Tree weren’t the most painful thing I’ve ever done by a mile. Weren’t even the most painful thing I’ve ever done to get better at magic. ‘Sides, the Giving Tree ain’t one of a kind, and it ain’t the only one I’ve used.”

Granny Smith grinned horribly at her. “And now yer throwin’ Apple Bloom to the wolves outta spite. Hunting bounties seems to’ve done a number on yer black lil’ heart. I always thought you needed toughening up.”

“‘Throwing to the wolves’ nothin’, Granny. I wouldn’t put Bloom through this if I didn’t have dang good reasons for it.”

“And what’s those reasons, pray tell?”

“The first,” said Applejack, “Is that if I fall in this Grail War, the Apple family will need some real powerful magics for the next one. Mac don’t have the gift, so that falls on Apple Bloom whether we like it or not. And for yer own edification, Granny, I do not like it. I jes’ know that it’s necessary.”

Granny Smith considered this for a moment, smoke softly rising from her nostrils, and then nodded. “And what else?”

Applejack’s face hardened. “Apple Bloom is an Apple. Apples are tough.”

Author's Note

For Scarlet :heart:

Two Terriers

After the summoning, Applejack and Rainbow Dash retired to the smoking room. Here at least they could avoid the constant interruptions of Granny Smith, Filthy Rich, and various other petitioners.

Rainbow Dash sat on the arm of Applejack’s chair and poured herself a glass of cider. “So I had my contacts at the Canterlot embassy put together a dossier on the other Masters—”

“Got it. Read it,” said Applejack, lifting the folder from her side as she gazed into the fire. She looked up, sheepishly. “Uh, thanks.”

Rainbow Dash grinned. “No problemo. Whadya think?”

“Interestin’, that’s for sure,” said Applejack. She took out the files, and began to shuffle through them. “We’re a week out and four of five Masters have shown up. Could be worse. With our Servant, we’ll have an edge scouting out the fifth player iffin’ they show up.”

“It won’t be a big head start,” said Dash. “The Mage Council’s spy network is pretty slick, and they’ve got their best on this Grail business.”

“Yeah. Sunset Shimmer.” Applejack took out the first file. “Prelate of the Council of Unicorn Mages. Senior lecturer at Canterlot University. She’s a bona-fide prodigy and a spellcasting virtuoso. Expert in all major schools of magic, master in conjuration, summoning, alteration, earth-sphere and air-sphere magic, and she’s probably the most skilled fire-sphere grandmaster alive today.”

“She’s no slouch.”

“Ain’t that the truth. She’s a mage through-and-through. We fight her on her terms, and I might as well dig my own grave.” She shuffled the files, and let out a little chuckle as she saw the next one. “Next up, Polaris Blueblood.”

“I think I met that guy once, at some charity ball. He wasn’t giving off a lot of ‘terrifying sorcerer’ vibes.”

“There’s a reason for that, sugarcube. This fella’s a meathead, just like you and me. Jousting champ. Only started studying the family magecraft when his elder brother died, seven-odd years ago. If the Bluebloods are putting him forward, they’re more desperate than I thought.” She put his file to the back of the pile.

Before Applejack could read a line of the third file, Rainbow Dash snatched it away from her. “And the dark horse of the race, Applejack Apple, former bounty hunter and known liar who can’t keep her whisky down—”

“An’ that’s why I don’t drink no more, silly,” said Applejack, nudging her with a hoof.

“Just kidding around, Applesnack.” Her expression turned serious. “What do you think about the last one?”

Applejack’s face darkened. The fourth file had a photo of a purple unicorn with a severely-neat purple mane and a closed book for a cutie mark. “This one’s a odd lil’ critter.”

“You can say that again.” Rainbow Dash took the file and began to read aloud. “Twilight Sparkle, twenty-eight years old, Canterlot born and bred. Had some medical problem with her magic, couldn’t cast spells properly until she was nineteen. Graduated high school at fourteen, earned her doctorate by eighteen.” She put the file down. “Real egghead, huh?”

“That girl is a theoretical genius,” said Applejack. “A decade ago she could barely turn a rock into a top-hat, and there she was creating whole new fields of necromancy. By the time she gave in her thesis, the different departments at the Canterlot Academy were in a bidding war. Not to get her as a postgraduate, to make her a professor. She’d have been a scientist superstar. That... didn’t happen. It got weird.”

Applejack flipped the page and began to think aloud. “She turned down every single offer and took a desk-jockey analyst job at the Equestrian Intelligence Service instead, the very day her spellcasting power met the basic requirements. Spent one year as an analyst, then another year as a full agent. Quit the EIS, went into the Seer Council as a warlock and countermancer. Took a year out to work on her practical magic. Divination, telekinesis, necromancy, evocation, elementalism... she’d work just long enough to become an expert, and move straight to the next school. Then she enrolled in the Canterlot Guard. Soon as she passed basic training, they assigned her to her brother’s old unit, the Watchtower."

“Mage-hunters, right?”

“Yup. Then, two years ago, her command spells appear and she severs all ties with the Watchtower.” Applejack sighed, rubbing a hoof against her temple. “It’s the same story in each job. She had the best ratings in her division for a first year intelligence analyst, and she switches to field work. Her superiors loved her field work, then she switches jobs. Same thing happens in the Seer Council. Best junior warlock, girl’s got real prospects in a tough environment, gives it all up to practice basic spellcasting. Basic spellcasting! And it worked like a damned charm, too. This here report says she made more progress in eight months than your average mage would make in eight years. She weren’t bad as a guard neither—they only take the best for the Watchtower.”

"As dangerous as Sunset Shimmer then, huh?"

Applejack shook her head. "It's... different. Sunset Shimmer's no mystery. Head of a magical organisation, heir of a magical family, best at anything she chooses to touch. She's in this game for the honor of her home as much as anything else, and it's clear where her motivations lie. This Twilight Sparkle, though? I can’t read her."

“Maybe there’s a family thing going on?” suggested Dash. “Her big bro is guard too, after all. Same unit, even.”

“Her whole family are with the guard, and the guard ain’t exactly on level with the Seer Council, or even the Canterlot Academy. No, if this was some family affair, she’d have joined up years ago.” Applejack sighed, stood up, and began to pace in front of the fireplace. “Twilight Sparkle... She could accomplish anything she chose, and she don’t choose nothing. She’s got no purpose, no goals, no... no desire. Sunset Shimmer succeeds and builds on it. Twilight Sparkle succeeds again and again and throws it all away. What could possess a mare to act like that?”

“Huh.” Rainbow Dash’s brow furrowed. “The Masters all want something from the Grail, or the Grail wouldn’t choose them. Sparkle’s a Master, therefore the Grail chose her, therefore she wants something from the Grail. Logic!” she said, triumphantly.

“You’re right,” she said, nodding. “Twilight Sparkle is as dangerous as any Master could be, and I don’t have a dang clue what she’s after.” Applejack stared into the fire once more, her face set in a determined scowl. “And if I’m honest with you, Dash? I find that downright terrifying.”

* * *

Twilight teleported back to her quarters, poured herself a cup of muddy coffee, and continued to read the file that Sunset Shimmer had given her. Her expression grew darker with every page she read. The more she learned about this Applejack, the less she understood.

Some parts were perfectly clear. Applejack Apple was the middle foal of three siblings. Both parents were mages, and both were deceased. The Apple clan was a minor magical dynasty, and the family matriarch, ‘Granny’ Smith Apple, was the current holder of the family lore. Applejack’s elder brother had no affinity for magecraft, and Applejack should have been inducted into the family lore when she came of age. Instead, she left home to travel before she earned her cutie mark, months after her parents died.

Accounts of Applejack’s adolescent years were incomplete and conflicted. She’d been to Manehattan, that much seemed certain. She’d probably been entangled in the criminal affairs of her relatives and notorious gang leaders, Julius Orange and Clementine Orange. Whether she’d caused their deaths, or allowed them, or simply been unable to prevent them, was up in the air.

She’d first learned to fight in Manehattan, at the Sixth Avenue Gym. She’d picked up a few other skills, too.

After Manehattan, the accounts were truly a mess. She spent years underground, pursuing a vendetta against those who killed her aunt and uncle. Or she killed her aunt and uncle herself, and retreated back to the family farm to learn the Apple clan magic in secret. Or she was chased across Equestria by those who hated her family, only appearing to lure her pursuers into traps one-by-one until she could emerge once more.

Applejack had definitely spent several years outside of Equestria, and had definitely traveled with a zebra alchemist and bounty hunter with a terrifying reputation. It was unclear if this had started when Applejack was still a teenager, or if it came later. Her first bounty would have been collected when she was fifteen years old; Twilight guessed she had met the zebra some time before that.

The first two years of her bounty hunting career were simple. Small jobs that paid. Big jobs that paid well. Risk always proportionate to reward. A learning curve of sorts, though Applejack’s skill and ingenuity were already on display. It took either incredible skill or impossible luck to steal a prisoner from a high-security cell in the Fillydelphia Correctional Center and deliver them to the buyer before anyone noticed they were missing.

Her motivations thereafter were... unclear. Irrational, even. No, more than that, they were insane.

Risk was no longer tied to reward, or even in the same universe as reward. She’d march into active warzones to extract delinquent debtors. She traveled through magically-null areas that by all rights should have leached away her life-force and left her a shriveled husk. She spent a year living in the Everfree Forest. Toxic waste sites, vengeance-happy criminal networks, rich bastards with their own private armies, barren deserts... if it was dangerous she’d take the job, no matter how rich or meager the pay was.

She once hid in a pool of molten lava for three days, to catch an adolescent dragon bounty. Twilight was familiar with the magics required to make such a thing possible. They required a sinusoidal metaspell to allow the restorative breathing magics and the high-grade pyromancy to exist in the same space without causing a large explosion. The breathing spell needed to be recast every hour lest it fade, but could not be cast more than once every fifty minutes, lest it cause oxygen toxicity and disrupt the sustenance weave for the metaspell. A fire-protection spell could last any time between ten minutes and six hours depending on caster skill, but it could not be cast on the same sinusoidal ‘vector’ as the breathing spell, which changed depending on the rhythm of both the breathing spell and metaspell during last casting. To sustain all three spells, in a situation where a second’s lapse in any of them would kill her instantly? That required a potent combination of unbreakable discipline and suicidal recklessness.

She perused the files. Each section of the report earned itself a separate place on her desk. She took a pad and neatly summarized the details of each section, and then copied the summaries onto a set of flash cards. The flash cards floated onto a flipboard and sorted themselves in different patterns. Length of job. Payment received. Political involvement. Use of magic. Location. An enchanted abacus ticked away as the flash cards fed numbers into it. No significant correlations. Quantitative analysis could not distinguish Applejack’s approach from mere insanity.

Twilight shook her head. Applejack had been a clear-headed, skilled and intelligent mare all of her life, and the simple fact that she had survived such a career implied more than a veneer of animal cunning on top of madness.

She returned to the files.

Applejack had taken a delicate job in Minos, a slaver empire where millions lived in chains. Entering Minos was easy—anybody with the means to buy slaves or goods was welcome—but evading the brutal state security was not. After laying the groundwork, Applejack sold herself into slavery and put herself under several geasa and contingencies to avoid revealing her true identity. She worked for several months in a notorious amber mine, where the one-year death rate was 25%. She murdered two overseers, both bounties, and sparked a slave uprising. Her magical contingencies sparked to life and disguised her as a noble slave-owner, who was rescued by state security as the entire empire erupted in riots. During her rescue, she kidnapped three other nobles, saving them from being torn apart by their own slaves and delivering them to far worse fates elsewhere.

That was six years ago. Minos had been in a constant state of civil war ever since.

She had worked for a year in Hoofington, a state owned by the robber barons of the Honeywine Merchant Group. A million ponies had once lived there in the breadbasket of Equestria; starvation and emigration had halved that number. Applejack found her bounties in workhouses where foals worked fourteen-hour days, in mercenary bars owned by the Pinkhoof Detective Agency, on farms devastated by corn blight and cruce. She had furthered some of the Apple Clan’s interests there, but Twilight could still not make sense of her presence. The Minos job, the dragon lands, these jobs had paid handsomely at least. Hoofington paid pennies in comparison. After food costs and safe accommodation, she probably lost money. Why take the job? It was hardly a vacation, after all.

The Cloudsdale Bone Garden job interested Twilight greatly. Applejack had been sent to apprehend an instructor from the Cloudsdale Flight School, a difficult task for an earthbound pony. Her approach was novel, to say the least.

She hid in the Bone Garden, a tract of land where the pegasi of Cloudsdale practiced equine sacrifice. The city floated over the area once a year, during the graduation ceremony of the flight school. Pegasi regarded as unworthy—those who failed their tests, flew poorly, or were simply deemed ‘weak willed’— were stripped of their robes, bound, and had arcane runes carved into their skin. They were then thrown from a great height into the Bone Garden below. Victims rarely died right away. Pegasi were good at falling, after all. The ever-present sentries—the Vespid Order—would feed broth to the dying ponies, keeping away their death by thirst and starvation. Their internal injuries and the cursed land would slowly sap away at them as they became part of the stinking, corpse-strewn wasteland. The energies of this dark ritual fed back into Cloudsdale and its citizens, and was the only reason that most Cloudsdale-born pegasi were capable of flight.

Applejack spent three weeks hiding in the garden, avoiding sentries and doomed victims alike, slowly rearranging bones and adding reagents to turn the entire place into a huge ritual circle. When the next batch of sacrifices were presented, they did not die the slow death that powered the rest of the pegasi race. Their souls were twisted instantly and they became vengeful wights as they fell. They attacked the graduating class with terrifying bloodlust, and as the instructor was dragged into the aerial melee, Applejack used a combination of athletics, magic and rope-work to pull him to the ground and kidnap him.

Twilight only read a few more reports before the realization struck: the only consistent detail was suffering.

Not money or treasure, not adoration or excitement, not even danger. These things were only incidental to Applejack’s work. Suffering. Where death, pain, and despair went hoof in hoof, Applejack found her home.

Twilight’s quill scratched furiously at her notepad. “There is no.. rational motivation between any of these actions individually,” she muttered. “However, collectively they represent one thing. They were intentional. Ergo, Applejack Apple desires or simply sees something in events which caused her and those around her both physical and emotional distress.”

“Based on previous accounts, I can conclude that Applejack was and is not reckless with her own life, as indicated by the thoroughness of her preparations and exploits. Therefore, she is not seeking excitement and not moving recklessly. Therefore, contrary to earlier statements, there is a rational reason she began immersing herself in suffering. Whatever that might be...”

Twilight sat up straight, stretched her neck, and summoned another cup of black coffee. She looked down at the notes. A start, at least.

“Applejack Apple...” whispered Twilight, mired in thought. “What were you looking for in all this misery? And what did you find?”

Revelry

Trixie followed her for hours before saying anything. “Lancer, I’m sure we’re going the wrong way. To the west is the Everfree Forest, to the east is Ghastly Gorge, and there’s nothing this far south but wiregrass and hoagspawn for a hundred leagues.”

Lancer did not look back. “Did you lay bricks for years in the baking sun so that merchants might bring once more the enameled bronzes, spider-silks, and philtres of Neighropa to our fledgling nation?”

Trixie blinked. “...No?”

“Then I counsel patience and hush, mageling.”

The pair continued to trudge through the sparse plain. The ground was thick with clay and stones, dotted with tufts of inedible grasses. Knurds and antlions skittered away under the tall grasses as the travelers approached. Crickets chirped in the dark. The sky was black but for a thin slice of moonlight through the clouds.

Lancer stopped. She lowered her head to the ground, sniffed, and looked ahead. She broke into a run.

“Wait!” cried Trixie, but she was forced to chase after the alicorn.

The pair came to a halt at a bulge in the earth. Lancer sniffed deeply, pawed at the ground, and then cried out in triumph. She scratched at the earth until a patch of shiny black rock was revealed.

“Stand clear,” she commanded, and then slammed the base of her spear onto the rock. Dirt flew in every direction, causing Trixie to yelp and duck to the ground. When the dust settled, an obsidian dais the length of two ponies had been revealed.

"Behold," proclaimed Lancer, "the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters!"

Trixie eyed the construct dubiously. "...is it underground?"

Lancer laughed. "In a manner of speaking. Observe!" She grasped magically at a handle on the floor of the dais and pulled, revealing a pair of doors leading straight downward, and beckoned Trixie forward. Trixie peered over the edge, and saw what appeared to be a deep stone shaft leading directly into the earth. A dim source of light was visible in the depths.

"Um, heights aren't exactly my forte, is there some sort of elevaWAAAAGHH!"

Trixie screamed as Lancer pushed her down the shaft. Instead of the terror of falling followed by an unpleasant, squishy sound, her stomach lurched and her vision spun before finding herself on all four hooves. In front of her was the rest of the shaft--now a corridor. She looked behind her. The doorway looked out onto endless sky, with Lancer somehow sticking to a cliff-face of sorts and peering down with an amused expression. The alicorn took a step of her own, and followed onto the same plane as Trixie.

Trixie looked at Lancer flatly. "My extensive education and prodigious magical talent tells me that this is something of an enchanted castle."

Lancer snorted. "All castles are enchanted. An unenchanted castle is none more than a stone house with airs." She walked to the walls, found an empty torch sconce, and tapped it with a hoof. Along the hallway, dozens more torches lit up with pale blue glows. "Thrippenwing! Attend to us!"

There was a rustle of wings and fur behind them. Trixie almost screamed when she saw a pony closing the doors behind them. An elderly thestral with fuzzy blue bat-wings and ear tufts so long they fluffed out like dandelion seeds curtsied to the pair. "M'lady," she said, "what do you require?"

"Two baths, clean clothes, and a tankard of ginger wine."

"As you wish." The thestral opened the doors once more, but they no longer led to the desolate plains. Instead, they opened up to a well-lit drawing room with plush furniture and a roaring fireplace. Trixie surveyed her surroundings. Heaving bookshelves, free of dust or mildew. A bowl of fresh oranges on a meticulously clean table. Suits of barding untouched by rust or tarnish. It did not look like a long-abandoned castle. It looked like one that had never been left.

"Where are we, exactly?" asked Trixie. "This can't be the original Castle of the Two Pony Sisters, that's in the middle of the Everfree."

Lancer sat back on a couch and drank deep of her tankard. "T'was once there in the mundane sense, I suppose, but I changed it to meet my needs. It has many rooms but one door, and that door leads where I desire. Time here passes in my presence, and is still in my absence. Thrippenwing is still the young mare of sixty that she was 'ere I last saw her."

"So why is it built all the way out here?"

Lancer drained her drink and tossed the mug aside. "Did you not listen? This castle is wherever I wish it to be. Once I have anchored myself to a node, it becomes a construct in my mind. I could open that door there and walk out of any doorway in Canterlot."

"But that's impossible!" Trixie protested. “A pocket dimension as large as that would collapse under its own weight, even if you used a full-grown hydra as a living focus.”

“I used nothing as petty as a mere hydra. I built this abode within an elder dragon.”

Trixie’s jaw dropped. Draconic exuvia and viscera were equal parts powerful and priceless. Dragons guarded their burial grounds fiercely and hoarded shedded scales, fearing necromancy and execration. They were not known for their generosity. Even entering negotiations with the few dragons that remained in the world was dangerous. Canterlot University hadn’t acquired fresh supplies for almost a century. They had paid the one called Héofungsnaca a room filled with gold, many artifacts, and a dozen skilled mages as indentured servants. In return, they had acquired a box of dragon eyelashes, eighteen juvenile scales, and a bowl of blood. Dweomers cast seventy years ago with scales as the focus still ran strong today. Trixie could not imagine purchasing the corpse of a juvenile dragon—let alone an elder dragon—for anything less than all the gold in Equestria.

“Like, a whole dragon?”

“Nothing less.”

“How did you get the body of an elder dragon?” whispered Trixie, quiet with awe.

“I slew her,” replied Lancer.

Trixie’s jaw snapped shut. Her eyes widened. Her jaw dropped again. “That’s not—I mean how—”

“It is of no consequence,” said Lancer, airily. She raised her spear, and tapped the butt three times against the ground. “Go through the door behind us. Once you have bathed and dressed, come and see me."

Still in shock, Trixie did as commanded. A wave of steam hit her as she opened the door. She stepped inside to a hot, hazy bathroom. For a moment she was still, taking in the room around her. It was not as she had expected. She had always imagined royal bathrooms as a supremely opulent affair, everything either marble or mirrored, lit by glowing pearls, and stocked with enough soaps, perfumes, and concoctions to rival an apothecary.

By that standard, this room was almost austere. The floors were stone and the walls were timber, there was a lone mirror in front of a low basin, and a circular wooden tub big enough for five ponies--or perhaps one princess--and tall enough to warrant a set of wooden steps up into it. A bar of soap, a thick-tooth comb, a towel, and a brush were the only bathing equipment. The only scent was that of steam and sandalwood.

Trixie moved towards the tub, but noticed a small bucket of hot water next to the steps, with a wooden ladle sticking out. You were supposed to clean the worst of the dirt off before you got into the bath proper. She looked down at her hooves. They were filthy, coated in blood, clay and grass up to her knees. She filled the ladle with water and began to clean her hooves and tail, breathing in sharply as the heat soaked through her fur and onto her skin.

She gasped as she lowered herself into the tub. Cuts and bruises she didn't know she had tingled the water flowed over them. When the water rose to her neck, she actually moaned with pleasure. Hours, days, weeks of tension seemed to drain out of tight muscles, and stiffness evaporated out from cold joints. She began to work soap into her coat with the comb, giggling at the wonderful, tickling sensation of a good clean she had no experienced in too long.

The amount of tangles and dirt still in her coat surprised her, but it made sense. She hadn't had a chance to wash since she was expelled. A flush of embarrassment rose within her as she thought of those days of frantic worry, begging everypony she possibly could for help and both looking and feeling like an unwashed vagrant with every step she took. A familiar sensation of rage also flowed through her. Sunset Shimmer. The mare that had expelled her, mocked her, stripped her of dignity, forced her to come crawling on her knees to beg for mercy, and coldly cast her out.

Trixie remembered how the wind howled across campus, how the snow whipped cold shards of ice against her face, and felt a chill run through her, far colder than anything in this bathtub had a right to be. How long would she have lasted, a failed mage cast out onto the midwinter streets? A month, until the hunger crept up on her? A week, dead in her sleep of exposure? One unlucky night in the cold?

She tried to put the thought out of her mind, and think of better things. Everything still felt like a heady, hazy mess. The voice in the room. The summoning. Lancer. The Grail War. The wish.

These wonderful and terrifying thoughts swirled in her mind as she bathed, but the cold, sneering visage of Sunset Shimmer never quite seemed to leave her.

As she idly worked the knots out of her mane, she looked down at the frogs of her hooves. The skin was wrinkled from soaking in water for so long. There were no clocks in this room, no sand-timer, not even a window to see the level of the moon. The water felt as warm as when she had first climbed into it. Still, it was probably prudent to finish bathing quickly. 'Servant' or not, Lancer did not seem the kind of pony to take well to lateness.

Her cape and hat were gone, replaced with a fluffy white towel and a clean set of clothes. She donned the lilac doublet, the grey velvet cloak, and the supple traveling boots laid out before her. They all fit like a second coat.

Smoke and raucous laughter hit her as she opened the door. Cautiously, she stepped through the doorway into a familiar barroom. Dozens of ponies were packed inside, their hooves clacking on wooden floorboards, crowded around plastic tables, sitting on rickety metal chairs, smoking, drinking, and joking. Decade-old photos of the West Hock hoofball team in their blue and claret kit hung on peeling, moss-green wallpaper.

This was the Twitchy Fox, one of the better dives in Canterlot. Trixie had drank here a few times, working as a card sharp, never too often and always incognito. This was not a friendly area of town for mages and students. The clientele were businessponies, smugglers, and their guards, all of them local. They had a certain level of notoriety, and the clout to inflict reprisals on anypony foolish enough to target them. Students had no such protection, and a mugging was one of the less-awful things that could happen to anypony from the Academy caught unawares in these parts.

Lancer was already at the bar, talking animatedly with a group of escorts and hustlers. She beamed as Trixie approached, and tossed a hoof-full of silver coins down onto the laminate bartop.

“Innkeeper!” she boomed. “A round of drinks for the bar, and a flagon of mead for my companion and I!”

A cheer went up across the bar at Lancer’s announcement. The barmaid, a thin mare in her thirties with a tall perm, a grey coat, and bags under her eyes swept the silver coins into a purse. “We don’t do mead here, love,” she said, “can I get summat else for you and yer missus?”

Trixie leaned over the bar before Lancer could answer. “Two cups of Buckquick, please.”

The mare nodded and placed two chipped mugs on the bar. She took a green glass bottle and filled each mug to the brim with a syrupy liquid, such a dark shade of purple that it almost looked black under the fluorescent strip lighting. She pushed the two cups across to the pair, and then went to pour drinks for the rest of the bar.

Lancer lowered her head to the mug and sniffed at it. “Master, what is this concoction?”

“It’s a, ah, fortified tonic wine. There’s caffeine and vitamins and electrolytes and stuff in it.”

Lancer eyed it dubiously. “It does cause laxity and drunkenness, yes?”

Trixie giggled. “Just about, yes. You know what they said about Buckquick? ‘Buckquick gets you fu— drunk quick!’”

Lancer nodded, lifted the mug with her magic, and downed the contents in a single pull. She slammed the mug back down onto the laminate, further chipping the mug. “Excelsior! There’s a kick to this wine!”

Trixie stared at her in horror. She had broken the first rule of drinking—never use your magic. Even within the halls of the Academy, it was crass beyond words to use telekinesis for such trivial tasks. Out in the boroughs of Canterlot, it was a mix of insult, insolent challenge, and careless flaunt. Every patron who saw such a display would resent it, and size up the unicorn for a violent robbery later.

As her eyes roamed the room for an easy exit—incidentally noting that the door she had entered through was now a solid wall—she did not see any vicious glares, unsheathed knives, or even sidelong glances. Lancer’s faux pas seemed to have gone entirely unnoticed.

In fact, nopony else had noticed Lancer’s ten-foot spear, or her ultramarine-blue armored barding, or the silver she was throwing around like seeds in a furrow either. Or, for that matter, the fact that she was an alicorn with wings and a horn and she towered several heads over every other pony in the bar. This puzzled Trixie. She cradled her own mug in two hooves, took drink, and set it down.

“Lancer, how has nopony noticed you? I mean, ponies tend to notice when the weapons you carry are bigger than they are.”

Lancer shrugged. “I am the rightful ruler of Equestria, and these are my little ponies. When I wish to be noticed—” she lifted her spear and slammed the base against the floorboards “—I WILL BE NOTICED!”

Every pony in the bar froze and turned to look at Lancer, terror and uncomprehending awe written on their faces. Ash fell from lit cigarettes. An empty shot glass fell to the ground and rolled along the wood. Trixie squeaked in shock.

“And when I wish for them to mind their own affairs,” murmured Lancer, waving a hoof, “they will do so.”

The ponies of the room turned away from them. Cigarettes were re-lit, drinks were ordered, and conversation resumed. It was as if they had not noticed the outburst in the first place.

Trixie grasped her mug and drank greedily, before placing it down with shaking hooves. “Please,” she begged, “warn me before you do something like that.”

“Mayhap I will,” said Lancer, noncommittally. She glanced at the barmare and scattered silver. “Innkeeper, drinks twice more, and two measures of your finest spirit!”

The barmare pulled out two bottles, and topped up the mugs with one. “Only spirit we carry is Ratchaser.”

Lancer nodded, and the barmare filled two shot glasses with a straw-colored liquid from a ceramic jug. The alicorn picked up the glass, downed its contents, and made a face. “Vile! It tastes like minotaur sweat and smells no better. Why do they call it ‘Ratchaser?’”

Trixie gulped her own shot, and quickly followed with a mouthful of Buckquick. “Some say it’s what the city ratters drink. Others say it’s the only thing that can wash away the taste of rat meat.”

Lancer laughed, and then looked around. “Tell me, where is this place, exactly?”

“This is the Twitchy Fox bar, in Canterlot,” said Trixie, nonplussed. “Didn’t you bring us here?”

“I merely wished to visit an inn, I did not concern myself with specifics. Do you know this place well?”

“I’ve been here enough times to remember it. I’ve been to most of the bars in the city, not that there’s many. A mare has to get her money somehow.”

Lancer raised an eyebrow. “Money? Were you not a student of magic? Did they provide no stipend?”

“The Academy provides room and board, and not enough by half. They don’t like students to have money or other options. I’ve worked as a card sharp, a pick-pocket, a storyteller, even an illusionist—though spellcraft is more dangerous than sharping, thieving, and fencing put together at times like these. A lot of unicorns hate those of us that can still use magic.”

A wry grin crept over Lancer’s features. “A storyteller, eh? Tell me a story then, bard-of-sorts.”

Trixie looked thoughtful for a moment, and then returned a similar grin. “Have you heard the tale,” said she, “of the donkeys and the cucumber?”

“I have not.”

“Two donkeys, Murphy and Paddy, are drinking in a dive. They’re both thirsty, but they only have a half-bit between them—not even enough for half a pint. Murphy turns to Paddy and says, ‘Paddy, I’ve a brilliant idea.’ He takes the half-bit, leaves the bar, canters over to a grocery stall, and buys a cucumber. When he gets back to the bar, Paddy says, ‘Murphy, you git, that was the last of our money!’

“Murphy shushes him and orders two pints, both on tab. Paddy panics and says that the guard will toss them into the cells if they can’t pay, but Murphy ignores him. They both drink their pints, order another round, drink those, and order another round. Then, Murphy takes the cucumber, and shoves it in his sheath so it’s dangling out between his hinds. He tells Paddy to get down on his knees, and put the tip of the cucumber in his mouth.

“Paddy doesn’t know what’s going on but he does as he’s asked. The bartender glances over, and sees Paddy kneeling between Murphy’s legs, with his lips wrapped around something long and hard poking out of his sheath. The bartender cries out in disgust, calls them perverts and chases them out of his bar, forgetting the money entirely.

“Outside, Paddy is ecstatic. It worked like a charm! He says they should try the same thing again at another bar, and Murphy agrees. So they go to a second bar, drink a few drinks, do the cucumber trick, and get kicked out. And then they do the same at a third bar. And a fourth, and fifth, and seventh and tenth until they are both utterly bladdered.

“Paddy stumbles, turns to Murphy and says, ‘Murphy, we’ve got to go home—I’ve drank so much, I can’t feel my legs!’

“And Murphy replies, ‘How’d you think I feel? I lost the cucumber in the third pub!’”

Lancer stared at Trixie for a moment. Then she burst out laughing. “An atrocious tale, I love it!” Tossing more silver across the bar, she exclaimed, “Inkeeper, more Buckquick for my companion and I!” To a busker huddled in the corner she threw a coin, and said, “Troubadour, play with cheer! This is a grand night indeed!”

Trixie and Lancer continued in their vein for some time, drinking, dancing, joking and smoking. Ponies seemed to join their revelry depending on whether Lancer desired it or not. The pair burned through a hearty pouch of tobacco, and drank enough Buckquick that the barmare had to retrieve another crate from the store-room. By the wee hours, Trixie was woozy from drink, and Lancer was chugging Ratchaser from a bottle.

Lancer’s bottle clanked onto the bar top as she waved a hoof vaguely in Trixie’s direction. “So-oo, Master. How did thou become mired within the Grail War?”

Trixie blinked, her attention torn away from an easy set of marks playing cards at the far end of the room. Old habits die hard. She thought for a moment, and then told Lancer the abridged tale of her last days at the Canterlot Academy. She spoke of the brutal intrigue of the student body, the arbitrary expulsions, and Sunset Shimmer’s cold-hearted threat. She spoke of facing starvation and homelessness, of panic in a closing hallway, of stealing the artifact. She left out the fear-wetting.

“You made a dangerous enemy, stealing from your former tutor,” said Lancer.

“I didn’t have any choice.”

Lancer banged the bottle on the bar again. “‘Tis good! This ‘Sunset Shimmer’ is craven and black-hearted, and has no regard for those that should be in her care. There are few sights as delightful as the blood of a foe such as this! We shall seek righteous vengeance!”

“Y-yeah! If that nag thinks she can steal this Grail and become an even bigger tyrant, she’s got another thing coming!” A blue spark popped off the tip of Trixie’s horn for emphasis. She dimly noticed a few patrons glancing her way. Lancer’s glamors did not entirely extend to her, it seemed.

“It shall be as it is,” said Lancer. She took both of their mugs, muttered under her breath, and waved a hoof over the pair. She then pushed the now-filled mug over to Trixie. It was filled with a clear, brown liquid.

“What is this?” asked Trixie.

“Tea, of an old recipe. Drink it, lest the night’s revelries take their toll at sunrise.”

The tea was cool and tasted of mint and mace. As Trixie drank it, she felt the cloud of fluff leave her mind, and the drunken, drowsy feeling of too much alcohol fade away somewhat. The cup clattered out of her hooves onto the bar, empty. “Thanks,” she murmured.

“You are welcome,” said Lancer. “Master—” she paused to consider something, “—the summoning ritual imparted knowledge of the Grail War. I know of the rules, of the classes, of the boons and limitations of this ‘form’ I take.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I also know that the Grail only chooses Masters who desire a wish. I was curious as to what your wish is.”

“Hhmm.” Trixie leaned forward onto the bar, propping her chin up with her hooves. “It’s not simple to put into words, I guess?” She sighed. “I came from a big family. Lots of brothers and sisters and cousins, never enough food. My parents, my aunts and uncles, they... I got extra food, because only a few of us could use magic, and we were too valuable to the family to risk. The rest went hungry for us ‘lucky’ few, and they pushed us for it. We had to succeed, or our entire family would be doomed.

“I got through childhood, buried two brothers. Got accepted into the Canterlot Academy, buried a niece. I thought... I thought I was strong. I was clever, I was cunning, and though I was no prodigy and no foal of fortune, I was a good mage. I thought—Sky above, I honestly thought—that I deserved it. I thought that most unicorns were too weak, or lazy or stupid, and that I would not be like them because I was a better class of pony.

“And then... perhaps a professor left the Academy, and they had to cut the student numbers. Perhaps Sunset Shimmer decided the other students were ‘too complacent’ and wanted to make an example, to show that anypony could lose everything. Perhaps a rich pony wanted my room! Whatever the case, it was all gone. I could not support my family, I had no place to sleep, no food, no work, nothing. All in the dead of winter.

“I knew I didn’t deserve that, but the more I thought, I realized: nopony deserves that. I was the best hope of my family, and even I couldn’t run this gauntlet that the world had set for me. It’s cruel, it’s wasteful, it’s pointless. Ponies should just have stuff, right? If a pony can work hard, they should have food, and a place to sleep, and not die! They should be able to make friends, fall in love, play music and have kids and all the things that ponies should be able to do! I wish that ponies didn’t have to run some stupid gauntlet just to live. I wish ponies could have lives again, all of them, and—” she almost stammered the last words “—and if Sunset Shimmer thinks she can stop me, I’ll tear her damn horn out!”

“Hear, hear!” cried Lancer. She swigged the last of her bottle, and ordered another round of Buckquick.

Trixie drank, and licked the tangy tonic wine from her lips. A red-maned stallion brushed past her, but she paid him no attention. “Servants have a wish too, don’t they?”

“Indeed.”

“So, what’s yours? Revenge on Celestia?”

Lancer grunted out a laugh. “And why would I wish for such a thing?”

Trixie swallowed, “Well, um, I just thought with the whole banishment thing and uh, the business with Nightmare Moon—” She stopped when she felt the utter stillness that fell across the room. Every hair on her coat stood up, and a chill ran from her throat to her loins.

“What did you say.” Lancer’s voice was as cold as the void of space.

“Um, I said about the, ah, banishment—”

“You said a name.” Lancer’s eyes bored into hers. “Tell me that name.”

Trixie struggled to stay upright under her glare. “N-n-n-nightmare M-m-moon...”

“HUZZAH!”

Trixie expected at best, shouting, and at worst, an undignified death. She did not expect to be pulled into a warm, if bone-crushing, embrace.

Lancer wrapped her fores tight around Trixie, laughing joyfully and rocking side to side. She pulled away, leaving Trixie to gasp for air. Lancer’s face displayed a triumphant smile, and Trixie swore she could see a glimmer of wetness in the corners of her eyes.

“Nightmare Moon,” said Lancer. “Ten centuries have passed since I set hoof on this world, and the ponies of Equestria still remember my war name!”

Trixie took a desperate gulp of Buckquick, and looked up. “Y-your ‘war name?’”

“Indeed!” said Lancer. “In olden times, a soldier’s rank in a warband was known according to their most famed deed on the field of battle, and their comrades in arms would call them by this name. To have no war name was a mark of raw inexperience. If you were an exceptional warrior, if you did a mighty deed after earning your war name, a deed so great that your previous battles paled in comparison, you might be gifted a second war name. Nightmare Moon was my eighth name.”

Trixie’s eyes burned with curiosity, terror forgotten. “How did you earn it?”

Lancer quaffed her drink, and cleared her throat. “Harken back to the days of the diarchy! In our third generation of rule, before the rise of the Oculun Steppes and after my sister and I learned the secrets of the maliferous Thude, the nation of the Southern Caribou waxed in both power and evil. They were the foulest slavers we had ever known, and their nation equalled that of Equestria in size and might. My sister sent her diplomats to beg them to limit their evil. Our requests were modest: we did not even ask them to free all slaves, only that they emancipate the children of slaves, forbid the murder of slaves, and end the castration of colts, the clipping of pegasi, and the debudding of unicorns. The caribou demurred. My sister and I lost patience. She gave me the army.

“We marched on the caribou as my sister pretended to hold diplomatic talks. My forces slaughtered all who took up arms against us. I drew on dark magic, and raised all fallen caribou as zombies and revenants. As we marched further, we overran towns and forts with the corpses of their former brothers and sisters in arms. All caribou who owned a whip or tokens of ownership were rounded up by the hundreds and brought to me. I sacrificed them, dozens at a time, in massive blood rituals.

“I used the power to invade the dreams of the caribou. I kidnapped the crown prince, hung him slowly and reeled out his entrails while he still drew breath, and forced the hanging into the dreams of every member of their royal family. Foul visions plagued every moment of our enemies’ lives, waking or sleeping. Caribou came to our army camps to lay down their arms, begging for the chance to surrender to me personally, that I might allow them to sleep once more. In less than four months, the entire Southern Caribou nation had been dissolved. Their armies had surrendered, their civilians fled, their culture plundered, their slaves freed, their very history destroyed.

“For one-hundred years afterwards, the palace of King Dainn was a graveyard, staffed by my undead. At the start of the war, the king gave me the epithet of ‘The Nightmare Moon,’ and assured his subjects that their country, their culture, their slave-tilled fields of grain, would last long after I was in the ground. For one-hundred years, his corpse danced a jig in his abandoned castle, bleating that same empty promise to his feasting hall of cadaverous courtiers until his throat withered away and his bones turned to dust.”

Lancer laughed again, elation seemingly radiating from her face. “To know that my war name lives on, a thousand years after my departure? You have no idea the pleasure this brings me.”

For the next several hours, they drank and laughed. Lancer ordered a kettle of sweet potato fries and devoured them by the hoof-full. Trixie showed off her array of card tricks—mundane tricks that appeared magical, magical tricks that appeared mundane, tricks both magical and mundane that did not appear to be tricks at all, but funnelled bits into the trickster’s pocket all the same. They sang songs and sucked down Buckquick while the night wore on, as businessponies and craftsponies paired off with hustlers and escorts and left, and as even the barmare fell into an uneasy doze and her wife appeared to serve the few customers who remained.

They paid for their final drinks shortly before dawn, then walked out into the night air. The front door of the Twitchy Fox opened onto a stone balcony, high up above the filth of the street below. To the left was a goods crane, and to the right led a series of steps winding up and down the edge of the mountain face, leading to all the other homes and businesses on this level. The faintest hint of azure was visible on the eastern horizon. In the urban sprawl of the Canterlot foothills, fires burned in landfills and makeshift campsites. There was an ever-present smell of mold and sewage.

Trixie surveyed the city. “This is Canterlot, where I was born and raised. It’s a total midden-heap.”

“I remember the Canterlot of my era,” said Lancer. Her mouth was set in a hard line as she looked from the east to the west. “A new city, carved from the Canterhorn mountain itself after our victory over Bregu á Sceade. It was a tenth of the size, and a thousandfold grander. I recall walking across a path like this ‘ere my banishment. It was carved from crystal.”

Trixie said nothing for a moment. She looked at the ruin where her family once lived, burned down in a fire and never rebuilt. They had never had a home for long. The Canterlot Academy was the longest time she had lived in one place. She turned to Lancer, and said, “You never told me what your wish was.”

“I confess, I did not.” Lancer sighed. Her eyes seemed tired, as if a crack had formed in her mask of bold determination. The corners of her lips were turned down. “You asked whether I intended to pursue vengeance against my sister. That... is a fair question.”

“Oh?”

“My sister betrayed me. As I strode forth to fight for our nation, bring justice, and destroy evil wherever it may reside, she undermined me and turned the viperous nobles of Equestria against me. In fair combat, she could not defeat me, and even in her basest form she would not raise an army against me and plunge our ponies into the maelstrom of civil war. Instead, she worked to strip me of my powers, dissolve the Night Court, and reduce me to a muzzled guard dog.

“After her machinations became known, I went to depose her, demote her, and take leadership of Equestria as was my right. That fateful night, she raved that my ambitions were too grand, that I would overreach and lead to the downfall of all of Ponykind. I had not expected a fair battle, but she did something truly cowardly: she took the Elements of Harmony, six magical artifacts that represented the peak of Equine achievement, and turned them against me. We had used these things to defeat evil in the past, both of us, and to turn them against me, she also had to turn them against her. A thousand years ago, I was banished to the moon, and her, to the sun.”

Lancer thrust her hoof out and pointed to the city below. “Gaze upon this grotesquerie, this sprawl of filth and shit that calls itself a city! This is the grandest city of our great nation! This is the fruit of my sister’s cowardice! In her hubris she doomed Equestria to a slow death. Even her layers of delusion cannot protect her from seeing this. Her shame alone will stop her from turning a blade against me, and if she dares, my martial prowess outshines hers tenfold. No, Master, I do not wish for vengeance on my sister. I could not dream up a more just retribution than what she has arranged for herself.”

A hoof reached under Trixie’s chin, and turned her to face the alicorn. Lancer’s eyes burned with energy. “I wish to rule, Master. Help me do this,” she implored. “You wish to see a fair and bountiful Equestria, one where ponies live fully, and do not suffer short lives of misery? Help me. I will restore Equestria to its former glory as is my right and my responsibility. Your wish will be this nation’s saviour, and I shall be its safeguard.”

Trixie swallowed. In a small voice, she said, “You really think we can do this?”

“Master, I have pulled this nation from a mire of pure chaos, I have petrified a living god, I have freed a nation of slaves with a single duel! Everstone burned a dozen times, and each time we rebuild, grander and better! I can bring about a new golden age, and you alone can help me, Trixie Lulamoon. Swear that you will aid me, and you will become a hero the likes of which Ponykind has never seen.”

“I swear,” said Trixie.

“Again!”

“I swear to aid you,” said Trixie, louder.

“Again!”

“I swear to aid you and make the world a greater place than ever before!” yelled Trixie.

“Good!” said Lancer, clapping a hoof down on Trixie’s back. “Now come, we have preparations to make.”

Lancer led the way along the stone path, avoiding chips and cracks and dubious puddles. Past a flophouse, they made a turn into an alleyway that quickly became a tunnel, running through the mountainside itself. Pocks marked the wall where gems had been pulled clear. The air was fetid and unyielding. A thousand similar tunnels ran through the mountainside in a loose network, joining the different levels of Canterlot together.

Pebbles skittered in the gloom. Trixie shivered, and said, “Lancer, I hope you know exactly where we’re going, you really don’t want to get caught in a tunnel like this unawares—”

There was a click, a snap, and a resounding cacophony as a heap of scrap, dirt, rocks and garbage fell from a support behind them. Trixie raised a shield, but it was unmarred. The trap was not intended to hit them, merely to stop them from retreating.

Four ponies stepped out of the darkness ahead, one bearing a lantern. They were led by a red-maned stallion that Trixie recognised from the Twitchy Fox. There was no way past the four except directly through them, and no way back.

The red-maned stallion chuckled. He had a lead pipe slung over his shoulder. The two ponies to his sides had a knife and a club, and the pony at the back carried a length of rope. “You’re in the wrong part of town, sweetheart.” All four stallions took a few steps closer.

Trixie stood her ground. She’d been through shakedowns before. You gave up any bits you had on you, and they’d let you pass unmolested. “We’re just passing through.”

Red-Mane grinned. “There’s a toll. Hundred bits, each.”

“Two-hundred bits? Hah!” Trixie shook her head at their audacity. That was a year’s wages for many ponies. “That’s insane, you haven’t seen two-hundred bits in your life!”

All four muggers laughed. “You have, though,” said Red-Mane. “You’re an academy student. Saw you casting spells at the Twitchy Fox, and you weren’t short on drinks last night. We don’t appreciate slummers like you, so you’ll pay up.”

Trixie’s eyes darted from side-to-side. “I don’t know what kind of students you know, but I do not have that kind of money.”

Knife and Club laughed as Red-Mane shook his head. Behind them, Rope seemed almost bored. “That’s not a problem,” said Red-Mane, leering at the pair, “two pretty mares like you will earn that money soon enough working for us. It’ll only take a few months—after we take out food and lodging, no?”

Trixie felt bile rise in her throat. “And you’ll kill us if we say no?”

Red-Mane laughed. “Don’t be silly! We won’t kill you, we’ll just beat you ‘til you can’t walk and take you anyway.”

Lancer nudged Trixie. “Trixie,” she hissed, “you swore to aid me?”

Trixie stared forward at their assailants. “Yes.”

“You are a trained mage, willing to fight a war?”

“Yes.”

“Defeat these knaves.”

“Gladly.”

Red-Mane slammed the pipe against the stone path. “Alright, enough wasting time, roll on your backs if you don’t want your legs bro—glaaarhhh...” A bolt of magic hit him, and his tongue swelled to enormous proportions, forcing his jaw open and dangling to the floor. He fell to his knees in pain.

Trixie cast a smoke bomb and charged. Two more flashes of magic were visible through the smog.

When the smoke cleared, the fight was over. Red-Mane was struggling with his ever-lengthening tongue and losing. Rope was hogtied with his own rope. Knife stood triumphant, his blade sank deeply into Trixie’s throat. Trixie gurgled blood and fell to the ground, dead.

Trixie’s body flickered and then reverted back to the form of the now-deceased Club. Knife stared in horror at the corpse of the friend he had just killed, before falling to the ground as Trixie bashed him over the neck with Red-Mane’s lead pipe.

The real Trixie stood back, panting. Her heart thudded with adrenaline. She raised a hoof to wipe blood away from her eyelid.

A hoof came to rest on her back. “Well done, Trixie. An impressive display for a mare your age!”

Trixie swallowed, and nodded. “Thanks, Lancer, what should we—”

As Trixie spoke, Lancer drew her spear and made three swipes with the blade. All four muggers now lay still. Lancer cleaned the blood away, and returned the spear to its sling.

“A wise king once said, ‘A fair ruler must rush not to judgement, but be careful and exacting in their actions,’” said Lancer.

Trixie raised her eyebrows. “You just summarily executed three defeated ponies faster than it takes me to decide to get out of bed in the morning! You call that careful judgement?”

Lancer wore a satisfied smile. “Indeed. I let him prattle away about his vile intentions for almost a minute before I reached my decision!”

Trixie snorted with laughter. “I can’t ask for fairer than that.”

“Nor could I. Now come, mageling, we have much to accomplish!”